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:

Birthday lovin'

My boys are three now. Okay, well they've actually been three for almost a week. You know how that goes. So here are my big, grown-up boys:

Sam, cheesin' it up for the camera

Ben, who won't stay still

Ben, King of Cradle Roll

Sam depositing his coins into the Sabbath School cake with the charming assistance of our own Miss Victoria.

My sweet boys, it's a miracle we've made it this far, and we've only called 911 once! I love you as a pair, but I love you so much more individually... despite your genetics, you are two distictly wonderful boys. Please make it to your fourth birthday ;)

nature's bountiful harvest

We found a surprise in our sadly, sadly neglected garden.

Goodwill Rescue, Part III

I wasn't planning on a part III, you know. I was so happy when I turned this

into this:

And now I can't get my copy to the left margin. Fantastic. I guess we're going verse style today.

Anyhoo.

I was very pleased with my pretty little coat rack. It's been very useful in the laudry room, too. Perfect for hanging the dress shirts and such right from the dryer.

The only complaint was that the lovely porcelain white color kind of blended in with the softly green walls. But what am I to do, repaint the walls a different color just so it stands out more? That's just crazy talk.

What I did was paint the laundry room walls, the cabinets, AND the coat rack, to make it stand out more.

I got skillz.

And I'm super excited with the result. But since I'm still trying to finish up the accessorizing of the laundry room, I'll give you a sneak peak, via the redux redo coat rack. Here she is, in all her cranberry glory:

We'll hopefully have full laundry pics soon!

I'm linking up to Transformation Thursday

Also linking to Mustard Seed Creations Before & After Party

So do I go to detention?

I've been playing blogger-hooky. I've been working on the kids' bathroom, and I was going to post about that, but turns out I hated the color I painted it, so it got a re-paint. I still have to do the floor, and a few other little projects, then I will post some pictures.

Until then, I thought I'd show you just how unenthusiastic my kids are about taking photographs. They were all sitting on a bench I recovered (thank you, Goodwill!) when Sofia asked if I would take their picture. Since this never happens, I ran to grab my camera. Silly mommy thought that since she asked for the picture, she would pose for the picture. No such luck.

Yes, this is my three lovelies looking happy for the camera. No amount of begging, pleading, silly voices, or entreating would induce them to smile. But at least they sat there. And didn't cry. That's a step in the right direction.

I'm so happy, I could spit.

Well, that may be a bit of an exaggeration, knowing how I detest body fluids. But I am very pleased with myself.

You can see in this picture that I have many blank, empty, LARGE walls in my living room. Actually, in my entire house, but that is not the point. The living room is where we hold our weekly vespers program, it's the first room you see when you walk into my house. And it's bare. I can't use the excuse that I'm still settling in, because we've lived here for 3 1/2 years. I'm just design-challenged.

But I finally decided to do something about it. It all started with this stack of frames:

Five of them I found at Goodwill for $.98 each. They had some 70s flower photos in them. Ugh. The bright orange and green ones used to hold alphabet cards that spelled the twins' names in their nursery. They've been sitting in my closet since the boys moved to their "big boy" room. So what am I going to do with all these odd frames? Spray paint them, of course! They turned out to be exactly the same size, even though the styles were slightly different.

So now I have a bunch of black frames. What do I do next? Wait for a few weeks for inspiration to strike, that's what. Finally I decided to do a patch of botanical prints. Problem was, I couldn't find any. I found a few free ones online, but our color printer got fried by some lightning the other night, and I didn't really want the hassle of printing them somewhere else. So I looked at Barnes & Noble for a botanical print book instead, you know, the coffee table kind.

No such luck. They didn't have anything to mention. Bummer. I looked around online for some books, but when you can't really look inside to see, I wans't going to risk not getting the full-size prints I needed for this project.

But today was my lucky day. I went out while Filipe was home on a conference call, and on my way to Borders, decided to stop by Half Price Books first. I went over to the Gardening section, and SCORE! found a reference book of wild flowers of America, with 400 full-color, full-page prints! Oh, I was in heaven. And better yet, the book was only $7.98!

The hard part was choosing which prints to use, although I suppose I can switch them out at will.

Anyways, I used a scalpel (yes, we have those around here) to cut out the pages I wanted, used one of the backings of the frame as a template to cut the picture to size, and got everyone lined up.

I took the pictures downstairs, got a big sheet of paper (really it was four sheets haphazardly taped together) and laid the frames out in their grid. I spaced the frames, measuring and squaring carefully, then traced around each frame. I then measured and marked where each of the hanging thingies goes. I found this method on this blog and it really worked well for me.

I then taped the paper grid to the wall, using a level to make sure it was all good.

That was the end of the hard part. Now I just tapped in my nails where I had marks, and hung my frames. They came out even! I was so excited.

And now I'm in the process of rearranging the furniture in the living room. I just can't leave well enough alone. But I am happy with this project because it was very difficult finding large art to go on this wall, and because this project was so awesomely cheap-- a grand total of $15.68. Can't beat that, folks.

And now I've finished rearranging the furniture, so here's a view of the room now:

looking from the dining room....

looking from the front door....

Yes, I think I'm one step closer to that homey living room I'm going for. Now I need some valances or something, maybe. And a few end tables. And maybe another soft chair. Yeah, that ought to do it.

 I'm also participating in Transformation Thursday on The Shabby Chic Cottage