A sneaky peaky....

Got tired of my blushing pink bedroom. When I saw two gallons of  oops paint at Lowes, I grabed 'em. Here's a peak, because the room isn't exactly clean yet.

Oh, and I lack curtains. And bedding.

All in good time....

The Lumps Don't Lie....

Santa knows me better than anyone...

And I got not one, but TWO lumps of coal in my stocking.

Fortunately for me, Santa must have been feeling sympathetic this year, because he tempered that bad news with a Lowe's gift card.

I guess Santa really does know me best after all.

From floral to festive in one fell swoop

Remember when I did my botanical wall in the living room? Love it! Looks so pretty with those natural prints.... but definitely not Christmasy. It stood out like a weed with all the other decorations around. But I didn't want to take them down after all that hard work. And there's also those nine nails in the wall to think about. So what to do?

Make it Christmas! After careful calculations, I determined that "Christmas" has exactly nine letters in it. Don't ask me how I figured it out, it's complicated. You'll have to take my word for it. Originally, I was going to buy some scrapbook paper, but when I was at Target, I found these delightful rolls of fun wrapping paper in the dollar spot. So I bought a bunch of those, put them with some I had on hand already, and was ready to roll.

I printed out the letters to make a stencil on Word. I used Courier New, because it was easy, fun shapes.

I then traced the letters on the back of different wrapping paper, cut them out, and glued them on contrasting paper. Easy!

Now my wall looks like it belongs to the festive room!





Linking to Trash to Treasure on Reinvented

Not as dramatic as planned.

I found this fabulous chair at Goodwill the other day marked $6.99. I grabbed that sucker and hauled it around the store with me, not trusting its fate to the hands of another. My original plan was to sand & paint it black (surprise!) and reupholster it with the black & white damask from my laundry room. But as I ran my hands over it, feeling for rough spots I would need to fill in, the chair almost cried in my palm. You see, the wood was lovely. Not in perfect condition, mind you, but so rich & good. I know I like my spray paint, but I have no illusions as to the profession nature of my abilities. I instinctively knew that by painting her, I would cheapen her. So I decided to leave the wood & just reupholster her.
I found my fabric today in the Red Tag Clearance bin at Joanns. $6/yard, and some quilting batting later, and this is what she looks like now:

So while she may not be the dramatic transformation I had planned, the colors actually look really nice in my neutral living room. Welcome home, little lady!

Laundry Room Makeover

My husband doesn't understand--it's the Laundry Room, for cryin' out loud! Why bother making it look good? I'll tell you two reasons:
1. I spend a lot of time in there. Seriously, folks. Three little ones? I practically LIVE in the laundry room. And doing laundry every day is bad enough, I don't want to have to suffer it out in an ugly room.

2. The laundry room is small. With limited time and a more limited budget, it's hard to pull a whole room together. I don't know of any room in our house that I am fully satisfied with. But since I'm doing a very small room, it's a lot easier to get more of what I want done. And a disclaimer: I'm not completely finished. There are a couple of areas that I still need to work on, but it's a whole lot better!

So, without further ado, here's the way the laundry room started out:

Yes, have a good look at all that clutter--shoes and bags of clothes to share on the floor, my DIY supplies piled on the counter. Yikes. And take a lood at those cupboards! I do NOT love the pink wood. Ugh.

So I mentioned in this post that I didn't like my new coat rack blending in with the walls, so I decided to paint them. My color scheme was inspired by this wall art I picked up a while ago at Hobby Lobby, but never put up because it didn't match:

You can see my cabinets peeking out, can't you?

Okay, okay, here's the new look of the laundry room:

So a couple of things happened here. Obviously, I painted the walls & cabinets. The wall color is one that the previous owners had left in the shed, so it was obviously free. The cabinets was from a gallon of Ooops! that I had picked up from Lowes months ago for $3 because I loved the color. But since I'm generally a neutral (read: boring) decorator, I hadn't used it. But I LOVE it on the cabinets! The rugs were stolen from the master bath, and are not permanent, but I like the look for now.

You'll also notice the curtains:

I did buy that material specifically for that window. I bought a yard (way too much) for 50% at Joann's, I think it was about $13/yard. The curtain rod was left over from the boys' old room. I'm thinking of spray painting it black. In front of the window is a silver metal hang bar for clothes--hideous! I thought about taking it down, but there's also the wood supports on the side that would look odd all by themselves. So I used some of my extra fabric to make a little cover. I just sewed a long tube and slid it over. Didn't even hem the ends, just tucked them it. Awesome.

I also did the electical covers with more extra material:

I used Mod Podge and cover the light switch cover and two electrical outlets.

This is above the cabinets, and I'm not toally satisfied with it yet, but it's a start.

The birdcage is $3.99 from Goodwill, and started out like this:

The plate was $3 from Ross, and the plant was comandeered from elsewhere in the house. I don't like the plant up there, though. Looks a little too 90s for me. So that's a work in progress.

Also a work in progress is the lighting. Currently, there's this:

 

Beauuuuuty, Mate!

I'm thinking if anyone is interested in getting me a Christmas or birthday present, something like this might be nice:

But you know, whatever ;)

For your pleasure, here's a quick review.

Before:

And After: