During August, Loren and I had a short break from projects on the house when we took a couple weeks to travel and enjoy the end of summer. Now we're back to work and preparing for things before the colder weather is here. We started using our good old steam heat system a couple weeks ago, and so far all is going well. 

In addition to putting out fall decorations and bringing plants inside, we continue to work on a few projects, both big and small. For the living room, Loren and I bought a wingback chair on Craigslist and are in the process of recovering it in fabric to match the window seat and cushions that my mom made for the living room. 

One of our projects has been having a fence put in the backyard in "puppy preparation" efforts. Our puppy joins us in only a week-and-a-half, and I plan to walk home over my lunch break each day, at least in the beginning, to play with it and take it outside for a potty break. A very pleasant and unexpected convenience is that the School of Education on campus, where I started working last week, is only a 15-20 minute walk from our home. 

We've also been doing some work with paint and decor upstairs.We now have a very green bedroom ("grape leaves"--which I love) and another bed--compliments of Mary Kate and Rob--so we now have two guest bedrooms we can use.

We made a few changes in what is our other guest bedroom. The bedside table below on the right was the table my Grandma Stolz kept beside her bed and that my mom had refinished as a gift for me.

We're hoping to hang the windows below against the soft brown (named "harvest brown") of the walls below as decoration in the same room. These windows were in my Grandma and Grandpa Stolz's farmhouse that has been in the family for generations. When my dad was born, my grandparents put in their first and only indoor bathroom--it's always been a house full of history, and it's touching to have a few memories from their house in our new home.