My house needed more gray and white

My little house has a lot of personality. 

I like it that way.

I just did two little projects this week to add even more personality.

Our living room has never had curtains--I've never really thought it needed them--but when I saw these birch tree curtains at Ikea for only $14/pair this weekend, I knew they would be perfect in the living room.

And instead of a curtain rod, I thought hanging the curtains on a tree branch would be awesome. So I did.

Too much?

Project #2. We bought our table and four chairs for $150 at K-Mart when we got married. Yeah, K-Mart. I actually love this table a lot and I've been sad thinking that the time was coming for us to upgrade to something bigger.

Juno just outgrew her Bumbo seat (yes, she is almost two) so I've been on the lookout for something at DI for the last month or so. I finally stumbled across this awesome bench and knew it was perfect for us!

My three munchkins fit perfectly!

The seat had blue silk (nasty, stained blue silk) so I switched it for some gray and white chevron. I was going to spraypaint the legs of the bench white, but it matches the finish on my table and chairs perfectly and I kind of love the contrast between the more formal cherry stain and the funky chevron.
So now at dinner, all five of us can crowd around our little table instead of Juno sitting in her Bumbo on the counter. I love having a crowded dinner table!

Easy garage mud room

Do you have little things in your house that just make you smile every single time you see them?

I have a few. The first is my gray and white striped hallway. I can see it from my bed and I love waking up and seeing it every morning! It's been quite a while since I did it, but it still makes me so happy.

With kids going to and from school in my near future, I have been wanting a mud room in the worst way. In Utah, kids walk to elementary school in all kinds of weather--rain, snow, slush, mud. I don't want all that coming in my house!

We don't have a back entryway in our house--the garage opens right into our nice family room--so I decided to create a little mud room in the garage itself.

I started by turning a tall, narrow shelving unit on it's side to create a bench with cubbies. Half of the cubbies are for storing our outdoor toys. I hung a wire shelving unit on the wall for even more storage. The other three cubbies are for my girls to keep their shoes and hats, mittens, scarves, blah blah blah, in. The yellow fabric bins are from Wal-Mart.

Now, I could have just thrown some hooks up on the wall behind the bench, but you know me. I always go overboard. Plus the wall was dented, scratched, covered in holes, and just in all-around bad shape. I still had a couple feet of fence left from when my neighbor's fence blew over last December, so I decided to use that instead. I propped it up behind the bench and then the girls and I went knob shopping at Hobby Lobby.

We bought six knobs to use as hooks. My personal favorite is the light blue one at the far left, although I really love the one right next to it, too. 
So to recap, when the girls come home from school all winter, they can sit on their bench and put their snow boots and snow clothes in their yellow bins and hang their coats and umbrellas on the hooks. And my house can stay clean.

Now going back to things in your house that make you smile every time you see them. While I was rearranging the garage, I found a can of light blue paint that I used when I painted my kids' little playroom--I thought it would be perfect for the garage door. I know it's something that no one will ever really see but me, but it was worth it. I love it so much!

Dresser into desk!

Back when I did my first bedroom mini-makeover (accent wall, new quilt, etc), I got a little dresser from DI for our clothes. It had a nice shape, but wasn't very functional. Too small, no runners on the drawers so it was hard to open, you get the picture.

Well, I've had this idea in my head for quite a while, and a few weeks ago, I pulled out my handy jigsaw (which I love--used it here and here and for a couple other things) and went to work.

The result?

My non-functional dresser (no idea why I took the picture from only the drawers up) is now the hub of my mom command station!

I took out the bottom two drawers, cut the supports off, and gave the whole thing a new paint job. Voila! New desk. I put it where the kids old art table was, next to our red couch in the family room. I was worried it would look too crowded, but it fits in just perfectly and doesn't feel crowded at all.
I've had the chair in my garage for over a year, just waiting for a makeover, and I really love how it turned out. This picture was taken before I really "moved in" to my new desk, so I added the captions so my lovely readers could get the whole idea. I'm excited to have a space of my own that I can use to keep our family organized--especially with Tempe starting school soon!
What are your best organization tips for all the paperwork that keeps a household running smoothly?

{Mr. and Mrs.} master bedroom

So it's been a while since I started my master bedroom makeover. In fact, it's been so long that I've been staring at a half-finished room for so long that now that it is actually done, I don't really feel that sense of accomplishment that usually comes with finishing a big project. Darn! But I am really happy with how it turned out. With three little kids, our whole house seems like it is filled with toys and other kid-related junk most of the time. I really wanted our bedroom to be a special place where we can celebrate being a couple.

I'm not going to share any before pictures because they are all on the other computer and I just don't have the energy to --spend more time uploading pictures from a half-dead computer. So you'll have to use your imagination. The walls were builder beige, the light fixtures were late '80s mod sconces, and there was a forest green, velvet cushion on the window seat. Oh, and there was a mirror niche in the wall behind our bed. A big ugly mirror.

What is it with my house and mirrors?????

Our bedroom is really big with vaulted ceilings (high vaulted ceilings). I started by painting all the walls navy blue--no paint info, because I got the first gallon as a $5 oops gallon. Then I had it matched for the additional gallons I needed.

To take care of the mirror niche, I used a section of the fence that my neighbor lost in our windstorm. My dad helped me to mount it on the wall directly over the mirror niche, using flush mount hardware. Easy peasy!

I got the bedside tables from KSL and spray painted them coral (Krylon Coral Isle) and then glazed them. I really love how they turned out!

We went to New Orleans for our honeymoon so I just HAD to get this poster from Orkposters.com.

The light fixtures on this wall were these white ceramic half-globe things. Blerg. I got the new little guys from DI (excuse the ugly lightbulbs, please) and replaced the globes with new ones. I looooooooove this picture of me and Jason! My favorite picture ever.

I love my new windowseat area. It used to just have a velvet cushion on it but we NEVER sat on it. I used it mostly to stack DI donations on. I decided to make it more of a focal point, so I stenciled the windowseat with some mustard yellow oops paint and hung some sheer white curtains from Ikea. I added some vintage books and a typewriter and a couple of candlesticks and pillows for accessories. But the best part is definitely the light fixture. Oh, the light fixture. I almost cried when I saw it at DI. I love it so much. It only cost $5. Can you believe that??? I am really the best at taking pictures, huh? Too bad I can't capture the true awesomeness of this light.

And hanging over my sewing desk are some of the paintings Jason has done for me. He paints one for me almost every year for my birthday or Mother's Day. So sweet!

Bedroom hell(p) part II

Thanks for all the comments/ideas/input on my last blog post!

Unfortunately, I am still having some trouble finding my vision. I just don't know what the heck to do with this room.

1)That giant ugly mirror alcove over our bed? Yeah, that's going to be completely covered by a reclaimed wood headboard (umm, that's a hipster way of saying a section of my next door neighbor's ratty old wood fence that I got for FREE). The fence section is weathered wood and I really don't want to paint it or do anything to it, but I also DO NOT want a shabby chic bedroom. So I'm hoping once I get it mounted on the wall, it doesn't look too country/shabby chic because if it does, I will just cry. If you follow me on Pinterest, check out my master bedroom board and you'll see a couple inspiration photos.

2) Ugly wall sconces. Ugly, ugly, ugly. '80s. Builder grade. Yuck. I have two semi-ok light fixtures that I got at DI a while ago, but they are very blah and unextraordinary. Not really what I want, but better than nothing. They are kind of fake oil-rubbed bronze, so I'm trying to decide what color to spray paint them: white? gold? white with a gold patina? white but glazed?

3) Speaking of the wall sconces, they are currently on the wall with our brown dresser. Brown as in painted brown because it was so ugly, not nice stained wood brown. Do I paint it white? Coral like the bedside tables? Do I just get rid of it all together? We can fit all our clothes in our closet, so we really don't need it. But if I do that, what do I put there? I would love a pair of awesome chairs, but our budget for new furniture is $the cost of the furniture from DI + $the cost of the spraypaint to refinish it = not realistic.

4) Curtains. The window is so tall that I don't know where to find CHEAP curtains that will still give me a nice puddle. I just want sheer white curtains!!

5) The windowseat. It has a super nice cushion with a really nice velvet cover on it--but it's forest green. Ugh. It would cost about $25 to recover, I think, which is not too bad, but what fabric do I choose???? I'm seriously considering taking the cushion off and stenciling the windowseat instead of a wall. We NEVER sit on it. Ever.

6) I just want some nice white bedding with colored sheets and fun throw pillows. We already have a down comforter but I can't find a duvet cover I like in my price range. I know I could just sew one together from 2 sheets, but do I really have to? Since the down comforter is white and I want a white bedspread, can't we just use that?

#startingtoreallyregretjumpingrightinwithoutaplan

DI lamp makeover

So now that we have 8 1/2 foot by 12 foot bookcases in our living room, I needed to find enough things to fill them up. Honestly, we could have lined each shelf with books and filled every one (we have a lot of books), but I wanted to break it up just a little bit. The living room also needed major help with the lighting situation. Our house has really weird electrical--like two lights controlled by two different switches in the very, very small hall bath, but only two small recessed lights in the large, vaulted ceiling living room.

I've been hanging on to this lamp from DI for a while. It fits so nicely on the photo-album-shelf, right next to the couch. I really like the shape and the color, but it's really nothing special.

I decided to do something so cheap and so simple to make this lamp a little bit more exciting!

Hi!

I bought skeleton keys from the $1 section at Michael's and hot glued them to the inside of the shade. When the lamp is off, it just looks like a plain white shade. But when it's on...

Isn't that more fun??? I just love that it's a little surprise every time I turn it on.

Also going on in this room: vintage globe collection. manual typewriter. still looking for new throw pillow/windowseat/curtain fabric.
I wish I had more keys (there are actually 4, spaced equally around the shade), but I got all the keys my Michael's had and they haven't made a reappearance :(

GIGANTIC bookshelves

Sometimes I have a really hard time coming up with a post title... so I decided to just go with something descriptive today :)

You may remember the bane of my existence, the gigantic mirror wall in our living room. I've tried several things to improve it--this empty frame collage and painting the walls in the room. Both of those things helped, but it was a still a huge mirror with a crumbling corners and a crack at the top.

Well, a few months ago I was at my lovely friend Tanya's house (who is, by the way, a fabulous decorator and an amazing thrifter). She has a set of Ikea Lack bookshelves in her living room--they're the kind that have an open back. All of a sudden inspiration struck.

Ikea discontinued the Lack shelves, but that was ok, because I found plans to build them on Ana White's website. And since my mirror is a monster (8 1/2 ft by 12 ft), I decided to modify the plans to make the bookshelves the same dimensions.

Luckily I waited until my dad was out here on a business trip. He did 90% of the work, but I learned a lot! Dad helped me assemble them and put them up and then I finished all the patching, sanding, priming, and painting, which was a huge job in and of itself.

Jason and I spent the weekend categorizing books and arranging (and rearranging) them on the shelves. We also did a little furniture rearranging--I think the room feels so much more open and inviting now!

Jason and I always said (from the time we were just dating!) that our dream house would have floor to ceiling bookshelves with a bookshelf ladder. Well, they aren't floor to ceiling because the ceiling is vaulted, but if it weren't vaulted, they would be! I want to get the bookshelf ladder from Ikea to put at the end unit.

My poor photography skills are really not showcasing this project properly. You really have to see it in person to appreciate it's awesomeness! The shelves are directly against the mirror (and don't worry, they are anchored firmly in place) and so the back of the bookshelf is the mirror. It looks really neat!

This room still has so many things I want to change about it, but we will just have to get there one step at a time. In the meantime, at least I have an awesome shelving unit with tons of storage space and character!

Boo! It's Halloween!!

Happy Halloween!

We had a lovely evening trick-or-treating. The weather was perfect here--65 degrees and sunny all day, and still 60 degrees when we were out. It was a vast improvement over last year, where it was pouring buckets of rain and freezing. We hit most of the houses in our neighborhood, including the cotton candy house AND the Kool-Aid house AND the glow sticks house, and then drove over to Jason's parent's house to trick-or-treat to them (they give out full size candy bars!)

This year, Tempe and Helena wanted to be unicorns--I used Family Fun's idea to make yarn manes and tails and a fabric horn and safety pinned everything onto hooded sweatshirts. Jason was a grunge fan from the '90s (basically himself 15 years ago), and Juno had a pick your own adventure costume--she could have been Little Bo Peep, Pollyanna, Scarlett O'Hara, or a porcelain doll, whichever you think is cutest. For her costume, I found the flounciest, ruffliest dress ever at DI and a straw hat with a bunch of flowers and long ribbons trailing from it. Then I got a real porcelain doll (also from DI) and cut the ringlets off, sewed them to a strip of felt, and glued the felt to the underside of her hat. She was way cute!!

So for my costume, I decided to be a character from a scary story I read to the girls earlier this week. Who remembers the folk tale about the girl that wore a ribbon around her neck all the time, her entire life, and when she was old and dying, her husband untied it and her head fell off?
Yeah, that's who I was. I just tied a ribbon around my neck. It sounds dumb, but Tempe is completely and utterly intrigued with that story, so she thought it was awesome!
I thought it was funny how we all decided to do different things with our pumpkins this year. Juno did nothing, Tempe wanted to carve hers, Jason etched the words 'And so it goes' into his, I used an antiquing glaze on mine (pretty much the most boring thing you could ever do to a white pumpkin) and Helena painted hers green. She just used acrylic craft paint, but on the pumpkin surface it turned into almost chalkboard paint. We spent all week writing on her pumpkin with chalk and drawing different faces on it--fun!
And now Halloween is over, and November is nearly here. Next up--Juno's first birthday party!

spraypaint makes everything new

So a few months ago I got this pair of barstools at DI for $8 each. They're super nice construction, solid wood, and I love the curvy legs. They were a little banged up, but they looked ok. Then I got another bar stool (also from DI) that is similar but a different finish. I thought it would match my table and chairs, but it didn't quite match that either.

I left them like that for a while, but recently I got sick of having 3 different wood finishes in the same small area.

So of course, I went to the spraypaint aisle at Wal-Mart. I was reaching for my favorite (Krylon Cherry Red) but I decided I should branch out and try something new. I went with Krylon Global Blue instead.

Here's the chair after a coat of paint. It was way too bright blue. It was like a fluorescent marker.

But I still had some glaze leftover from this project, so I decided to glaze the chairs. I didn't take after pictures of the curvy bar stools, but here is the other one. I love how they turned out!

Since these chairs don't have a lot nooks and crannies for the glaze, I glazed them a little differently. I brushed the glaze on really thick and then carefully wiped it off with a dry rag. I went over the same area 3-4 times to get it how I wanted it. The great thing about glaze is it's very forgiving--if you don't like it, you can wipe it off with a wet rag before it dries, and if you want more, you can add more.

an enchanted treehouse

We built a treehouse!!!!

I've had this plan floating around in my head for at least a year and I finally acted on it last week after I found a cheap used slide.

It's not very big--in fact, it's more like a platform with a slide coming down. Still, it's perfect for two little girls to climb all over.

There's a slide coming from the platform and a swing hanging from a branch over to the side.

It's the perfect little leafy getaway for eating lunch or reading!

I have a vision of turning this corner of the yard into an enchanted hideaway for the girls, filled with fairies and gnomes and butterflies to keep them company, and old stumps, rocks, and toadstools to sit on and entertain their guests. I was inspired in part by this darling fairy garden. And someday we might need an outdoor mud pie kitchen like this one.

And to start us off is this little toadstool, inspired by these. I made it out of a stump that we had to cut down when we built the treehouse and an old wooden salad bowl from DI that I spraypainted. I looooooove it. Isn't it darling?