Something New and Something Old

There is something new at our house and this is what it is making me in-vision.

Pottery Barn Kids Light Knock Off

I just loved this light featured in a Pottery Barn playroom and wanted something similar for my Dr. Seuss playroom. So I went about trying to figure out how I could make one myself and I succeeded. Gosh I love it when ideas work out!

I am in Love!

I am in LOVE, and just in time for Valentines.

This Years Christmas Decorations

When the husband was finished getting all the Christmas boxes down from the garage I asked him what theme he wanted to do this year, of which his response was "We do themes?". Apparently he has not noticed that for the past 8 years we have had a different assortment of Christmas decorations out every year.

So here is what is up and out this year at our house...

Halloween Outdoor Decor

I try to add a little to all my Holiday decorations each year, and this year I decided to take another que from Martha and make a "spooky" wreath. 

Upholstery Reveal!

BEFORE

I got my living-room chairs back awhile ago, but have been trying to wait and show you the whole room makeover, but now that some projects are on hold and the Halloween decorations are up, I decided I can not wait any longer and have to at least share my chairs with you.

Sleeping Beauty

I love love love my new bed! It is everything I could have hoped and dreamed of. I have really bad leg, joint, and hip pains with my medical problems and my new bed has cut that pain down by about 80%. My problem before was that I would already be in pain before going to bed and then because I could not get comfortable in bed all my moving around would just further inflame and agitate my pain. Now I am able to sleep in pretty much the same position all night long. I love it!

The Bed and Breakfast is Now Open

The husband and I have been sleeping terribly lately, and I have been pushing for a new bed for awhile now.  So this past Labor day weekend we went out and made the big purchase for our new King size bed. I am so excited about having a new bed and am crossing me fingers that it will be the solution to our tossing and turning.

Since we upgraded from a Queen to a King I need all new sheets, toppers, comforters, quilts, bedskirts, and a headboard. I thought it would be fun shopping for all these things, but for some reason it stressed me out big time. All those items can add up quick and trying to figure out what I wanted, and need and then matching it to the existing things in the room ( like this new piece of art we picked up at Tuesday Morning for $20) turned out to be a little of a challenge. After two days of searching the entire Salt Lake Valley Jayna and I managed to pull it off some how and we only had to make three trips to Pottery Barn. 

The other thing I have been really excited about with this new purchase was moving our old bed down into the basement guest bedroom. In the past we have had a Queen full size Air mattress down there which has worked out well for guests, but I wanted something a little more long-term setup. So last night we went to work doing moving the bed and I worked on all the bedding and decorating for the guest room. 

Fireplace Redo

Last week I decided to finally repaint our fireplace mantel.

Stars and Stripes

The Fourth of July is a pretty fun holiday here in the great state of Utah because we kind of celebrate it twice. We do the normal 4th celebrations, and then have a repeat on the 24th when we celebrate Pioneer Day. So with the style of my home and the fact that Utah does two celebrations in July I find it my American duty to fly the stars and stripes a little more than most might in July. The husband thinks I already went overboard, but this is just half of what I wanted to do this year. I didn't even get around to spray painting stars on the lawn like I really wanted to. 

This is a photo of one of my ancestors celebrating the Pioneer Day in Farmington Utah. He was one of the first people to own a truck there, and he sold produce and flowers from it. No wonder I love gardening and growing flowers to cut.

Dinner is served... with a touch of Peacock

I posted forever ago about a rug I was going to purchase from Urban Outfitters, but have failed to post about getting it and how I liked it until now.

Annie Get Your Gun!: Gun Cabinet Makeover

I finally finished the gun cabinet! It was not that it was a hard task I just kept piling projects on top of projects and this one ended up at the bottom some how. I loved how it turned out and sincerely thank the old Grandpa or teen wood-shop student for making it for me. Remember how I bought this for only $35.00 at DI awhile back? You have to love having a vision for old things.

A Little Urban Is On It's Way!

Spring left us her in Utah on Tuesday and hopefully will be back by Saturday. Until it returns I feel like just watching movies with the Jayna Berry (who has a stuffy nose) and shopping online instead of going out. 


Click the Read More button to see what I found!

Playing With Color

I just helped a cute gal over by me pick out paint colors and get design ideas for her house and we came up with a really fun color palette. 

Back in the Day Projects: Kitchen Remodel

I was tagged by another blog to share my 6th picture ever posted. Since I have not been doing this blog terribly long I decided to pull a picture from my family blog which ended up being perfect because it was a before picture of our old condos kitchen before we remodeled it.

Upholstered Coffee Table

Remember this coffee table from a jack pot trip to the thrift store I had? Well I finally got around to finishing it.

Laundry Room Makeover - How to Paint Stripes

The weather here in Utah ruined my plans this last weekend for finishing my garden in the backyard, and getting family pictures taken. I was so disappointed, but was determined not to let the husbands three day Easter weekend go to waste. So I put him and his brother to work in the laundry room for a quick weekend room makeover.

I have been using frog tape lately for various projects of mine that have require me to use paint blocking tape. I have really liked it, and have thought it has lived up to it's claims. I was checking out their website the other week and found this great picture of a striped hallway on their homepage.

I loved it! I have a favorite piece of fabric that is white and gray striped, and I am still waiting to find the perfect project to use it for. So I thought, what would be even better than my favorite fabric? Having a room in my house that makes me feel like I am living in my favorite fabric!

I had the husband replace the stock dome light with this black lantern style indoor/outdoor pendant light that I bought off of craigslist for $10.00. I have another one that I will put in the laundry room bathroom as-well. I wish they were a little bigger, but I think they look fun. I have to fix the paint on the ceiling though, because it looks like the previous owners (the bank) just painted around the dome light.

We then went to work marking off where our paint stripes would be. You want to first decide how big you want your stripes to be and then measure them out on the wall with a tape measure marking your stripes with a pencil mark on the wall about every foot or so. We wanted this project to be quick and easy, so we made sure that we would start and end with a white stripe so that we did not have to do as much cutting (painting against trim-work or ceiling with a brush).

After we were done marking everything we began to tape. When you tape the stripes off make sure you are placing the tape in the correct spot. Depending on what stripe you are painting your tape will either go above or below your marks. Check your tape once placed on the wall to make sure your tape is level. Not all walls are level and that could effect your marks and taping, so make sure to double check everything before painting. After we finished taping we ran the edge of a credit card over all the tape to make sure it was adhered well to the wall, and that there were no bubbles.

*opposite of what this picture is showing I would recommend to paint horizontally with the tape to assure you do not pull the tape up while painting*

Next step paint! I used the same color gray that I used on my kitchen table which was San Antonio Gray by Benjamin Moore (mixed in Behr paint from the Home Depot). We used rollers to paint the majority of the taped off sections. Make sure you paint the right section! I was really paranoid about this because I do not have the white paint for this room. So touching up and fixing mistakes was out of the question. Then we used our Purdy brushes to do the cutting in the corners and edges. Purdy brushes are a must for any good paint job, don't waste your money buying cheap brushes. The tricky part here is that you do not want the paint to dry too much because it could affect the tape and the sharpness of your line, but you still will probably need to do two coats of paint. We waited about 10 minutes or so before doing the second coat of paint, and cutting. So if you are doing a big area it would probably be best to work in little sections rather than rolling a first coat on the whole room. It will just leave you scrambling to get all the cutting done in-time for a second coat.

Then comes the fun part! peeling off the tape to reveal your freshly painted crisp stripes.

We removed the tape immediately after painting the second coat. You want to double check that all your tape edges are well painted. Remember you can always touch up the center of the stripes, but the edges where the tape is will be almost impossible to touch up afterwards. This was the biggest project I have used frog tape on and it really pulled through for me. I had almost no touch ups or bleeding to deal with. The little that I did have was quickly removed or fixed with a wet Q-tip since the paint was still fairly wet after removing the tape. It was critical to me that my tape work well, since like I stated before I did not have the white paint used in this room.

I love my "new" laundry room. It makes me so happy to go in there that I may actually do laundry. I am still trying to decide what color to paint the cabinets in there. White, gray, or blue are the choices. Let me know what you think I should paint them. Now all I have to do is a little accessorizing and I think I will have a pretty spiffy laundry room.

Grass Terrarium

I spotted these grass terrariums over at Monkey See - Monkey Do and just had to post about them. They look so fun and easy to do if I can figure out where to buy the wheat berries. Anyone know where? What a fun spring / easter craft to do with kids, and they only take about 5 days to sprout. I am all about instant gratification, so this is something I can handle. I am afraid I will make tons of these and put them everywhere though. They just look so fresh and beautiful.

For the full how to head over to Yolanda's blog.

Expensive Accessories Are For The Birds

These cute birds have brought a little feeling of spring to my home, and these birds sing "cheap, cheap, cheap", instead of "chirp, chirp, chirp". At a dollar each from the Dollar Tree you can't beat the impact they make on a table arrangement like this one.

I am crossing my fingers and hoping my bulbs (also from the Dollar Tree) bloom shortly so I can enjoy them in the front room.

What says Spring to you?

The Craft Room of My Dreams

condo craft room

I have been really lucky to have always had a craft room in all of our homes. When we were living down by BYU in a little duplex as newlyweds I had one of the two bedrooms to spread out my fabrics and organize my craft nick-nacks. Although small it worked out well for my needs at the time. Then when we moved to our condo were we had three bedrooms of which we turned one into a nursery when Jayna Berry came and the other into an office. We never got it fixed up exactly how I would have wanted, but we had the computer in there and a mini ping pong table that I could get out when I needed to sew or do projects.

When we were looking for a new home after selling the condo it was hard to find a house with everything we wanted, but that is always the struggle when looking for a home. Then we found the house we are currently in. It had everything we wanted and much much more than we ever thought we would get out of a home. It was a home I had found online, and I remember walking into it for the first time. It seemed to good to be true, the first floor was so open and it was fresh looking. I walked past the living room and dining room, and then I turned the corner from the family room to see this space off the kitchen dining area.

"Ahhhhhhhh"(in angelic heavenly voices) is what I must have heard. It was the holy grail of craft room spaces right down to the french doors that adorned its entrance. (ignore the mess in there) I wish I could share it with every crafty women who does not have enough space at home, who is crafting at the kitchen table, or working out of a makeshift closet.

We are going to start slowly working on this room, and this is my inspiration. I have already bought the paint. It is going to be the same color blue as the playroom upstairs that we did for Jayna.

I got one of my craft tables for my birthday and will save up my pennies for the other one.

We are going to be building desks that I will paint black to go around the room similar to these Pottery Barn ones, and we will also have some storage bookcases on one of the walls as-well. I am hoping to also put shelving in white around the top of the room like the picture above.

I have big visions for this room and love that it also has a little door to the backyard off of it. I picture kids doing homework, me sewing drapes, and the husband working on the computer at a corner desk. Here are some other craft room inspirations that I love. I will keep you updated on this room as we go. For now we will all dream together.