Goals

I have no pictures to share with you. I haven't got a fancypants camera and my regular old point and shoot is floating somewhere either in the bottom of my bag or in my car. Or maybe a kid ran off with it. I'm not sure. But, someday when I get around to properly cleaning my house, I will take pictures of it and you can see what I am (and am not) working with.
Anyway.
I want to make a lot of changes. We built our house in 2008/09 and we built a house I did not love from the start. We bought our lot. We bought beautiful, one story, big covered front porch, ideal layout plans. And then we had the land surveyed and were told our beautiful house was not going to happen on that particular lot. We are at the end of a cul-de-sac and our lot is very narrow at the front and we would not be able to comply with the easement requirements. So, back to the drawing board on houses. I found a two story (Cheaper to build! Separate living and social areas! hooray!) that we liked well enough, but it was not my dream home. My resentment grew. We built it anyway. So, now I am unhappy in it and want to change it. All the time.
Here is a quick rundown of what I want to do:
Jump on the board and batten bandwagon in my dining room. Also maybe add some interest to the ceiling with some beamy treatment. And paint it. I hate the green color in there.
Crown. Everywhere. It wasn't in the budget when we built but I need it in my life.
Paint the entire downstairs, really. We have a pretty open concept and so almost everything is one color. Butter Cookie by Behr. Loved it when we put it in and still like it, but I'm craving a calm blue.
Deal with Eva's giant closet. seriously, that space could be an apartment in New York City and I haven't even painted it. It's shameful.
Finish our bedroom.
Finish the basement. I'm hoping to sand and paint the stair case as I've seen so many homebloggers do. It's beautiful.
For the rest of this year, I'm mostly focusing on the basement as my husbands parents are coming to stay for a few weeks at Christmas and I don't have anywhere to put them if I don't finish that!