Full Swing

Now that the bedroom is livable, we're on to the living room and hallway. I thought I would show you what we're dealing with over here. All the furniture is piled into the dining room...which means we can't eat in there so we have a table crammed into the kitchen. Now I remember why I wanted that island in the kitchen!

Here is the mess. It's probably crazy for me to show you these horrible pics, I may be delirious from breathing in spackle dust for so long. I'm warning you, it ain't pretty.....but hopefully will be when it's done.

We'll be painting most of this woodwork. Before you beat me with my own paintbrush, let me say that it looks way better in the pics. It's not in great condition and I have zero desire to strip and restain it all. Light and airy is more my thing anyway, so white it is. Don't worry, family and friends have already lectured us plenty!

My son was just dying to show you his "mans" (that's what he calls them). He was trying to get into every shot. Love this kid.

I also love our Sheltie but not what he has done to my door. I had a roman shade on there so we could see the view out during the day but he's jumping all over it. I'm thinking I'll need a full length sheer door curtain to deter him. Darn dog.

SO much spackle dust to clean up.

Maybe I can try and tune the mess out and just look at the pretty view out the door. Ahhh, that's a bit better.

So that is our mess. I can't wait till this part is over. The living room is about half our downstairs so fresh paint will make such a difference. I'm SO tired at this point though. I really just want this over with. It's been constant mess over here for a long time and I'm reaching my breaking point.

Please forgive me if I'm not so great at getting to visit you all and comment this week. We are going to work, work, work and get this done so that we can enjoy the yard and relax this summer! Hopefully I don't scare you off with these "before" pics.

I'll update when I can!

Vintage Indie Feature

My Home Tour

Today I have the pleasure of being featured on Vintage Indie. My interview and pics can be found in the home tours section. Be sure to click through all the categories, you won't be disappointed! The Crafting - DIY section is one of my favorites. There is a great tutorial on making an apron with vintage materials.

Another room to cross off the list...

We are all moved back into our bedroom and it's such a relief! Another room to cross off the "To Do" list. There are still some things to do but I'm showing it to you anyway. You don't mind seeing a 86% done room do you? Okay, great!

Here are the before pics. The walls were blue, the trim was natural and the carpet was...well....it was gross. I realize the curtains didn't match either, I just kind of threw them up there to block out the strong morning sun.

This is what it looks like now. The door for the headboard came from the basement. Wall lamps are from Ikea.

I love this print from Etsy. The print is a little more on the modern side and I love how it looks in an old frame.

I had purchased this bolster cover from Pottery Barn but not the insert. I was going to sew and stuff one myself but then my mom gave me an idea. We were talking about how to fill it and she mentioned rolling up some batting. I happened to have two old, flat, worn out pillows that were destined for the garbage. I thought hey, I can save some money and roll those up. So I did. And stuffed them in there. Then the space in between the two I filled up with an old towel. It took some smoothing and stuffing but I saved a good $20-30. You can see the the one pillow all rolled up in there.....

Still to do....

~ A bedskirt. I'm thinking brown.

~ The full length wood mirror was a clearance find. I'm going to add some trim around it to bulk it up some more and paint it black.

~ Euro shams. I bought the fabric and already had the pillows, I just need to sew some shams.

~ Repaint the armoire. When we first painted it a few years back, we sealed the top with water based poly. What a mess. It completely discolored the top so now we have to sand and repaint. Poly is definitely not meant for lightly colored painted surfaces.

~ Some trim around the door headboard.



I think that's about it. I'm sure when I click Publish Post, I'll remember something else it needs. For now we're on to the living room. The finishing touches on the bedroom can wait, the living room walls just can't. They are filled with paint chips and spackle and look pretty sad.

* *Had to edit because I'm dying with laughter here!!!! I was scrolling back through the pics and RMS was staring at me. It does not stand for Rate My Space! I'm not that decorating/HGTV insane. LOL The letters are our first and last names. Oh my gosh, those may have to go. Now every time I look, all I will see is rate my space. *sigh*

Sunday Bliss

Hi everyone! What a beautiful Sunday. The sun is shining again today, ahhhh.....

I'm sorry I haven't been posting as often as I usually do. The nice weather is pulling us outside to play in the sun.

I went for a walk with my son and took pictures of homes around our neighborhood. Unfortunately I had a hard time taking pictures and keeping him from running into the street at the same time. I'll have to take a solo walk one day and get more. There are some beautiful homes around us....

Life with kids.....I have this covered dish that I use to put special things in. One day it may hold cookies, another day a small treasure like this fake nest and eggs. I went into the kitchen to find it like this. Littlest Pet Shop stickers and a state quarter. My daughter obviously gets the idea of putting treasures in here to keep safe.

(You should be able to click the pics to enlarge, I believe I finally have that figured out.)

Yesterday was the first official "junking" day of the year for us. Yay! We drove around and went to a community yard sale....only there weren't any to be found. Very strange. Then we headed over to a church rummage sale and I found this scale to add to my small collection. It's the perfect shade of gray.

Best of all, it was the last few hours so everything was marked down. I bought this for $3 and it was originally marked $10.....

I also grabbed this hen. It would have had a bowl type bottom to it. These have a name, someone help me out......

Anyway, I thought she was cute even missing her bottom so I snatched her up for a dollar.

I tried (unsuccessfully) to get a good picture of the beauty outside our bedroom window. One of our trees in front blooms with tiny pink flowers this time of year and it is all you see out this window. So pretty, but not with my poor photography skills. I need to take another class!

At the very least it is a sneak peek of our "pea soup" bedroom. I still have a few things to do in there before I take pictures but we are sleeping in there again. Oh how wonderful it is to be off the floor in my son's room! We'll be putting the headboard up today so I'll take some more pics this week.

More life with kids...We have some spring bulbs here and there, planted by previous owners. I have been walking around the yard wondering why they didn't bloom. The greenery was there but no flowers. Are the bulbs spent? Did an animal eat them? I wasn't sure.........until........

My daughters presented me with this lovely Mother's Day bouquet. They had been picking all my flowers and stashing them in a vase up inside their tree house. Figuring the bouquet would not last until Mother's Day, they decided to give it to me early. I love that they thought of me, and will be sure to have a talk with them before my summer perennials bloom. ;)

I hope the weather is pleasant where you are and that you had a nice weekend. I'm off now to get to work in the bedroom and then play outside again. Dinner will be burgers on the grill.

Does it get any better?

My Turn

It's my turn to Pay It Forward. Let me tell you how this works! I'm going to send a surprise package out to 3 readers. I'll be going on a thrifting hunt to find a treasure or two to send your way. If you participate, you then send a package out to your 3 people.

If you are interested in doing this, just be one of the first 3 to leave a comment on this post. You'll receive a package from me and then send 3 out. Sound fun? Oh and if you could, in your comment let me know what types of things you collect. What do you keep an eye out for when you go "junking?"

Foodie Friday ~ Pumpkin Applesauce Cupcakes

This is my second time participating in this fun, food filled event! Thank you to Designs By Gollum for being such a wonderful hostess. I thought I would share these yummy Pumpkin Applesauce Cupcakes. TGIFridays had a similar cupcake dessert last time I was there and I wanted to make them for my dad for his birthday.

Go ahead, take one while I go dig out the recipe....

Ahhh, found it!

Pumpkin Applesauce Cupcakes

1 Package yellow cake mix (with pudding in the mix)

1 cup canned pumpkin

1/2 cup water

1/3 cup applesauce

3 eggs

1 tspn nutmeg (I didn't have it so I used 1/2 tspn allspice)

1/2 tspn cinnamon

Frosting:

3 cups powdered sugar

1 (8 oz.) package cream cheese, softened

2 tablespoons butter

1 tspn vanilla

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

1. Combine all ingredients in large mixing bowl and beat with a mixer until well blended.

2. Turn mixer on high and beat for 3 more minutes.

3. Line a muffin pan with 24 paper muffin cups.

4. Fill each about 3/4 full.

5. Cook in preheated oven for 20 minutes.

To make the frosting:

Combine all frosting ingredients in a large bowl and beat until smooth.

Frost cupcakes after cooling.

Now, after I made the cupcakes, I had quite a bit of frosting leftover. It seemed silly to let it go to waste. I had a brainstorm! Stuffed french toast. I took out some Pepperidge Farm brown sugar cinnamon bread from the freezer and went to work.

Mmmmmmm! Sugary and good. Now I understand you may need a visit to the dentist after just reading this post. If you decide to make this "dessert for breakfast" meal, please don't forward your bills to me!

So Flattered

Julia from Hooked on Houses asked if it would be okay for her to use my pictures for a post on her blog. Of course my answer was YES! It was so fun to see my home on her site. She posted about our "Everything Room." Thank you to Julia for having such a great blog, and for putting a big smile on the face of this stay at home mom obsessed with all things decorating.



If you haven't been over to her blog (ummm...that has to be impossible unless you live in a cave) go check it out now!
http://hookedonhouses.net/



And in other (less exciting) news, our bedroom is almost ready to move back into! We've been sleeping on our mattress, on the floor, in our son's room so it will be wonderful to have our room back. Hubby worked on the second coat of poly today so now we just have to let it cure for the week. And he likes the paint color now, it's looking way less "pea soup" now that it is all done.

Love those gleaming new floors. They will be scratched and dusty in no time, but for now...ahhhhhh.....

I did the windows in black again. I'm hooked!

Some things to remember when refinishing floors:

~ Start with a lower grit, course sandpaper and move up from there until you get to fine.

~ Use a tacky cloth to get the dust up off the floor. It's almost impossible to get every speck of dust but we did the best we could!

~ Stir, don't shake the stain and poly so as not to create bubbles. Foam brushes work well for staining.

~ Cotton is great for wiping off the stain once it sits. Try not to use paper towels as they give off a lot of lint. Our Home Depot sells bags of t-shirt type squares that work perfectly.

~ We use lambswool pads to spread the poly around. They give a smooth, streak free finish.

~ Be sure not to skip any steps. It's very important to sand in between coats. Your poly will have a nice, durable coat that way.

~ If you have appliances that run on gas or propane, you may notice an odor. Don't panic! It is a reaction with the chemical and will go away as the floor dries. It's best not to use your dryer while the smell is strong as it will transfer to your clothes. Open as many windows as you can for the most ventilation.

Here is a helpful article:

http://forum.doityourself.com/kitchen-gas-appliances/22739-gas-dryer-smells-like-kerosene.html

Onto the kitchen....It's back to the way it was with the island in the middle. *sigh* I couldn't get used to it by the window as nice as it was for the laptop. I left a chair by it though so I can still plop down and do some blogging. I've been meaning to paint my spice rack for a while now. It blended right in with the back splash.....

The white shows up so much better.

Gray Days

Gray? Grey? I'm not sure but for this post, I'm going with gray since that is what all my Benjamin Moore paint chips say.

I want to paint our living room and upstairs hallway a nice shade of gray. Not too light, not too dark, not silvery, not lavender tinted, not blue but with a blue tint to it, and not gray that looks like I slapped concrete on the wall. And yes, I went into the paint store and asked for exactly *that* gray. They must get nuts like me in there a lot because he was so helpful and didn't even look at me like I was crazy...which I'm sure I sounded. Many many many paint chips and a few samples later and this is what my living room wall looks like.

Gosh, who knew this would be so hard?! My couch is blue so I wanted something to compliment it but that didn't look blue. The sofa also has tan in it but the kitchen is tan and I want to break away from having the whole house looking beige. I think I have it narrowed down to that middle color up there. It's called Coventry Gray. It has an ever so slight tan undertone to it and seems to blend well with the kitchen.


In my search for the perfect gray, I headed off to Google and found a lot of talk on paint colors!

Finding the perfect gray was easy for Kasey. Look at how great her kitchen looks!
You can see more here:
Lola B's

House Beautiful did a great feature on gray colors. You can see the slide show and get ideas on their website.
http://www.housebeautiful.com/decorating/colors/26-shades-of-gray


I love the serene look of this space:

Photo: Better Homes and Gardens

You can't go wrong pairing gray with touches of black:

https://www.decorpad.com/relatedPhotos.htm?photoId=7924&currentPage=1



Apartment Therapy had this gorgeous living room:

http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/ny/blogging/blogging-elle-decor-faceted-stool-039992

Nantucket Gray by Benjamin Moore seems to be popular in all the searches I did online. Would you believe that is a paint chip I don't have? I need to go back for it and take a look before I commit to Coventry Gray. Here are two images I found using the Nantucket Gray search.

Photo: flickr.com/photos/jgsearls/2851245164/

This color looks amazing on the exterior of a home:

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/48752005@N00/219526097

I also looked around this great website by Lesley David Design. She has a passion for paint colors and even offers consultations if you need helping deciding. Here is a list of some favorites:

http://paintyourspace.com/tag/favorite-color/

I also want to say thank you for all the well wishes for my daughter. She is feeling much better and was able to run around on Easter and eat massive amounts of candy with her brother and sister. I hope all of you had a wonderful holiday. Between spring break and Hailey being sick, I haven't had much time to keep up with my blogging. I'm ready for them to head back to school and get back to normal around here.....for a little while anyway. Summer vacation is looming.

Ack!!

Next up on my google search list: Activities to keep the kids busy this summer!

Look What Landed At My Door Today!!

Today a wonderful package arrived on my doorstep! It was from Martha at Mid-Atlantic Martha! She participated in "Paying it Forward." You can read about it here: http://mid-atlanticmartha.blogspot.com/2009/04/paying-it-forward-passing-it-on.html


I'm so excited to participate in this and could not be more thrilled with what came to me. I took pictures so I could share it with you all.

Such a pretty card....

The first thing I took out was this 18th Century Spoon Bread Mix. Mmmmmm.... I'll read to you what it says on the back: "The tradition of Byrd Mill began in 1740. Young Patrick Henry visited the mill often, bringing corn, wheat and buckwheat from his father's nearby plantation. Byrd Mill continued in operation at its original site until 1968 when an untimely fire brought an end to production in the original building. Byrd Mill now located in Ashland, Virginia manufactures some of the finest gourmet mixes available while still offering many of those old tyme products." Well, if the recipe has been around that long, it has to be good!

Look at all these goodies! Blackberry Preserves, mmmmmm...... And a sweet silver basket and spoon. It's a good thing no one was recording me when I opened this package because I sounded a little like, "Oh *gasp* how beautiful, oh this is so pretty *more gasps*." I am absolutely taken with this little basket. As Martha pointed out in her card, I can use it for so many things, sugar, lemon slices, a special cupcake or even a small floral arrangement. I know I will find some wonderful things to use it for and when not in use, it will be on display.

And last but not least, look at this apron! I have been slowly collecting them and this one is a perfect addition.

Just look at the detail on the bottom:

I think it looks great hanging with the others, don't you? I can hang it like this....

Or like this since it is reversible. Hmmm....I seem to be out of pegs now. Time to stop collecting? Of course not, I just need another peg rack!

Martha, thank you so much for this wonderful package. It was so much more than I was expecting and I love everything. I can't tell you how much this made my day. My oldest daughter is sick with a bad Strep infection and then had some terrible side effects from her medicine. It was a long night and this package was just the pick me up I needed today! :)

Now it's my turn to "Pay it forward." Look for an upcoming post on how you can be next and receive a package from me. I think it's wonderful how this thing we call blogging brings people together and creates friendships. Hope you all are having a wonderful week.