At Last

Remember my dining room table?

My husband bought it on a neighbor's garage sale.  That neighbor had built it and it had different legs then.  So Craig put some old porch posts on it for legs instead.  


Now, I have to confess, I have always liked the table per se.  But in other ways I have hated that table.  It needs some better finish on top so it doesn't look like I wiped it with a dirty rag every time I clean it off.  


A few weeks ago I decided to do something to make me like my table much more than I do:  paint the legs and apron "the color".


When we first built our house I picked "the color" for all rooms from the background of our dining room wallpaper. So the lumber yard named it "the color" for our records. 


I found some leftover "the color" in the basement and decided it would look better if my table had a different look from the other furniture in the room.  I'm not into matchy-matchy stuff but someone else in my house is more into that.  


So we had painted our table legs black to match our hutch that we painted.  Our chairs were black when we bought them and they have never really looked like a match and it has bugged me.  They are a true black and the hutch and table legs were more of a blue-black.  


I filled all of the screw holes in the apron (which also bugged me) weeks ago and sanded them smooth.  I've been ready to paint with my free paint all this time but waited for a day when Craig wasn't working from home.  (Because he uses the dining room table)


Yesterday, I did it.  I painted the apron and legs of my table and I truly do love it better.


Now I just need to put a better finish on the top and I'll be satisfied.  Maybe.

Shopping My House

I pretend to be an interior designer.  Not really.  But I do love decorating my own house and making a lovely place for my family and I to be.  


I also have a little problem with wanting to change things up all the time once in a while which isn't necessarily fiscally responsible.  But it doesn't have to cost you anything!


Not at any set times, but often during a year I will "shop my house" and move things around or from room to room.  It gives you the feeling of newness in a room without the cost of buying new stuff.  And it challenges my creativity to see how I can use the things I already have in new and different ways.  


Last week I set about doing that with a few accessories around my house.  It is really fun and you might find some really fun new uses for items you thought you didn't like anymore.


Then yesterday I was getting ready to make ONE CHANGE in my bedroom that was going to lighten and brighten it up and make me feel "new" in there again.  I'll admit that I did make two purchases in the past couple weeks to achieve this.  Gotta use those birthday discounts or they go away.


That's another thing you can do.  Just change ONE THING in a room and it can make a world of difference in how you look at it.


Anyway, I had been feeling like my living room curtains were feeling too heavy and dark for summer.  Of course, it didn't help that I saw some darling lighter colored patterned ones on a cute blog.  But getting new ones just isn't reasonable or right.  


And since I was taking the ones I was tired of out of my bedroom anyway, suddenly, they looked really cute in my living room.  They are lighter, they are brighter and the colors work perfectly.


So, voila'.  I washed them up and hung them and I love them.  I'm sure the dark heavy ones will probably feel better next winter, but for now, I got something "new" without buying a thing!  








                                                                    BEFORE

                                                                     AFTER

Have you shopped your house lately?

Ta Da

Here's the project I've been working on this week.  


It started like this:

And after making some chalk paint for which I found the recipe on Pinterest, it now looks like this.

Without flash.  I like it better, softer.

With flash.

I ordered some Martha Stewart hardware from Home Depot and voila!

A cute dresser for my daughter's new teenage room.  I love it.  I went looking for an old dresser but really didn't like this one at first.  Then it kind of grew on me.  Especially when she took some money off the price!  

I'm so pleased with how it turned out.  Now I can't wait to paint the room so it will be right at home.

From Blah to Blue

Remember this?

Well, after seeing a really cute blog with a painted birdcage I decided how I could make mine stand out a little more.  I mean, there is all that wood in this scene and it kind of looks boring don't you think?

Now my husband likes the 'all wood all the time' look but I like pops of color and whimsy.

So yesterday I did this.

I started with this:

And made it look like this:

And ended up going paint crazy by repainting these:

I think you can see that the color before was okay but it was too periwinkle .

That's better.

And I did it all with leftover paint so, yea for free!

Oh, Pinterest, I Love You

I'm the kind of person who, if you tell me, 'you HAVE to do (try, see) this' I will probably not do it.  For instance, I have still never seen the movie E.T.  When it came out everyone told  me 'you HAVE to see it'.  But I didn't have to, so I didn't.  Guess I'm rebellious in strange ways.

Friends and family have been after me to get on pinterest and I have avoided it.  And then I didn't.

And now I'm hooked.

As I mentioned, I love beautiful things--crafts, decor, flowers, plants,doors, fabrics--and the list goes on.  Something I love to do is to look at magazines to get my beauty fix.  Pinterest is kind of the ultimate magazine and it doesn't take up any space in your house!

There are millions of beautiful, smart, entertaining things out there in this incredible world and time in which we live.  I'm having fun with it.  And I can walk away from it.  Really, I can.

Though I certainly don't claim to be like some of the famous decorating bloggers I do like to share my ideas.  Here are a few things I would like to share that maybe someday I will "pin".

See those cute printed "curtains"?  Those are table cloths that I purchased at Target for not much money and they make the cutest addition to my upstairs dormer.  It was too dark with just the navy light blocking curtains and I fell in love with the pattern on those table cloths.  But I don't really use table cloths that much.  So I clipped them up there and they looked so much more fun.  And who knew how great they were going to look with my pitcher and basin that my husband bought me years ago?

I had people comment on my use of this old ladder to hang my Christmas stockings.  Well, for most of the year, it holds my kids' pictures.  I've used it in a different room in the past to hang an old quilt.  So far, I like this use of it best.

I got the idea to make this little display of dominoes from a magazine.

Here's a close up of how it looks in a fun bread bowl I got on clearance at--you guessed it--Target.

This is the view from our master bed.  I am not trying to brag, but I have had these wall words for YEARS before other people went crazy for them and they were available everywhere.  I custom ordered this verse specifically for my bedroom.  It brings me so much comfort especially when I am home alone.

I'd love to see how you make your house and home beautiful!

Transformation

From this     

to


This

is what we've been working on this summer.

Here's a few more views:

What Do You Think?

Here they are:

Your thoughts?

Because You Care So Much

Today I bought new rods for my drapes for the dining room.  So as soon as I can get them up (when my husband can do it) I will take a picture.


I know everyone in blogland is waiting on pins and needles to see them!

My Husband Has Serious Skills

Okay, so I'm going to reveal the "project" that we've been working on the past week or so.  The problem is, it is not completely finished.  But I need advice.


I've wanted to do something to the lower portion of my dining room walls for a long time.  We actually painted our whole house the color of the background of my dining room wallpaper all those years ago.  I still love my wallpaper but in recent years I have been embracing more color in the rest of my house.  Plus, it is very hard to keep the off white colored walls "clean" with a St. Bernard in the house.

So while my hubby was at school a couple weeks ago I went for it and painted the color that I wanted below the wallpaper.

And it was good.  But I didn't want to stop there.  


I've always loved the look of wainscoting in dining rooms.  But I certainly didn't want to PAY to have any made or anything like that.  So I researched do it yourself stuff online and found a great way to do it myself.  Or, I should say, have my husband do it!  


So when I introduced the idea very haltingly, he went for it.  I couldn't believe it.  Truthfully, I thought it would be far less labor intensive than it was but I'm thankful that he was willing.

So we started with a room that looked like this. It had red curtains which I moved to my son's room upstairs after cleaning them.


Let's just say, a LOT of painting and cutting of MDF was done in the first few days.  MDF is really cheap.  We used 2 sheets and had just about no waste.


We removed the floor trim.  Added a wide molding made from the MDF and a rail on the top side.

Already a huge change in how it looks!  


Then we added molding on top made of simple pieces of smaller MDF  that looked like this:

Then the stiles were added.  Most of them were simple strips of wider pieces of MDF but around the windows they had to be cut out very carefully.

Not the window but that photo would not upload!

Next, we decided to add a molding up near the ceiling to hide the fact that I had had to order the wallpaper before we even built the house and took the measurements from the house plans.  We had just enough wallpaper but when our cousin put it up he had to do what he could with what we had!  So now it looks more finished.  Of course that meant more painting!

And cutting!

Now I am thrilled that it is done for all intents and purposes.  We need to do some caulking and touch up painting but it looks great!

Only problem I am having is this:  the paint seems to be a bit lighter than what I had picked out (even though there is about 3 coats on everything!).  I used the color swatch to pick out new curtains at Target and then I sent for the ones I wanted in the correct length.  Now they seem too dark when what I wanted was a look that was kind of seamless color from up high to down low.  Will that make a difference????

In this picture they do not look any different in color but in person they do.  

What do you think???????