Before & After Master Bathroom Painting

So our master bathroom was in some serious need of some TLC!

The towel rod was in the middle of this wall

& when we were moving in it was hanging off on one side and had ripped out part of the wall.

My husband patched it up as you can see in the picture.

The tile isn't straight along the tub due to a really poor tub installation job and has always bothered us.... along with grout all over the wall. We have debated on ways to make this not so noticeable such as trim it off with a small trim, but we decided to paint it and see what it did... I didn't take very good pictures so you can't see how bad it really is...

But here is the after picture.... once again, you can't really see it but it is amazing what the world of difference the paint made.

Here is our "Water Closet". I bought these wreaths for my last house for about $2.50 each and I really like them in here....

But now I love the color in here also.

The color in all of the pictures are looking a bit more orange than it really is. The color is a bit more caramely in person.

We had a towel ring holder here that also ripped out of the wall and my husband had to fix it.

Here is the wall painted.....

And here the towel ring is hung and functional once again.

Excuse the mess as I was just starting to pull everything up and start taping.... (my husband is more embarassed about the mess than I am.... who are we kidding if you let everyone think that our house is spotless all the time!)

Here it is clean and painted! AAAHHH!!! So much nicer!

This kind of shows the crappy grout and tile job...

And in the next picture, the paint pretty much hides all of that!

I am so happy that this is done so that I can enjoy this room once I have my little one in the next 2 weeks! Accessories will come later, I just wanted to show the paint job that we did!

You will hear it from me non-stop on here.... Paint your walls and don't be afraid of color! I love how warm my bathroom feels now and I actually want to just sit in the bathtub now! (my husband has never sat in the tub until we painted the walls... I think it cozied it up for him too!)

Busy Life

We have been super busy the past couple of days with painting our master bathroom, drawing floorplans for our basement, getting materials, painting my daughter's nursery, framing the basement, and now we are going to be hanging beadboard in the nursery. We have family coming in town tomorrow so we are trying to get a few things done before they come so I haven't had time to do a post. When I have more time to get pictures on the computer I will show what we have been up to.... I am hoping I can get one done tomorrow but I can't promise anything. Lots going on which means lots to post eventually :) Stay tuned!

Merry Christmas

I hope everyone had an awesome Christmas!

I certainly did but I have so much to do before my baby comes that I wasn't sad when it was over. My husband scored with me big this year because he bought me my living room drapes! I am so excited to have them.... he didn't think about the rods though so we are going to go get some this week.

I have a paint color all picked out for Kenidi's nursery and we are going to get the beadboard as soon as we can find a table saw to borrow from someone. (anyone close to us have one?)

As of right now, I need to go finish painting my bathroom!

Lots to do and you know I will post pictures along the way!

Happy Weekend to everyone!

Kenidi's Nursery Inspiration

For those of you who don't know, I am expecting my second daughter in about 3 weeks and haven't even started on her nursery yet.

A while back I posted this picture as my Inspiration Piece for her nursery, but

I tried and tried to find fabric that would coordinate with this and bring in the teal and I couldn't find anything really at all.

After looking around and seeing what there was out there, I sat down and cut out some paint chips and came up with another color scheme.

These are the colors that I pulled out and I thought they would be kind of fun and different to do. I want this room to be very cute but I don't want it "girly" with pink and purple.

Yesterday I was running errands with my husband and we drove by a Joann Fabric Store and I told him to pull over and let me go look at fabric's really quick to see if I could find something for Kenidi's nursery.

I told him I would be quick but I ended up finding some fabrics that I was in love with. We had to run to meet someone really quick and I told him that we had to go back and he had to let me know if he liked them.

Of course he didn't really care but he let me get the fabrics to start on a quilt for her.

And here is what I got!

I am still going to use the brown bedskirt that my mother-in-law made and I am going to put some beadboard on the walls and then I found these fabrics that unconsciously have all of the colors from the paint chips in them. I honestly didn't even think of the paint chips when picking these fabrics out, I just loved them and could picture how darling the room would be.

I wasn't planning on having the green in the combination but when I got playing around with different fabric combos I just loved the green and thought that the green polka dot was much cuter than the teal one I found.

I am going to take these fabrics and make a large rag quilt that can be made into a comforter when she has her crib into a toddler bed.

Here is the picture with the fabrics and the paint chips. The paint chips aren't exactly the same colors as the fabric but they are pretty darn close.

I am only going to put beadboard about 3/4 of the way up in the room so I need to figure out what color to paint the top 1/3 of the room.

Maybe I will have to have a vote on it. There are so many great colors to choose from and I am not sure what direction to go.

I am SO EXCITED that I found these fabrics and am completely in love with the direction that this room is going.

Tip Of The Week - Making what you have work!

I hope everyone had a great weekend!

I went up to our family cabin with my husband and my baby girl for the weekend!

We have to snowmobile to get into the cabin during the winter and that is always fun, not quite as easy when you are 8 months pregnant though :)

While I was up at the cabin I came up with this weeks Tip of the Week.

How many of you out there have something in your room that you can't get rid of and you don't like all to much? Example: cabinets, carpet, sofa, etc.

My family purchased our cabin about 4 years ago or so. This cabin was built in the mid 90's I believe and came with Teal carpet! It is not the most attractive color of carpet but it was in good shape and we didn't want to replace it.

I decided to take that color as my inspiration and make it work in the space.

The room I am going to show you is our basement t.v./ping pong room. I really made sure that in this room, the carpet looked like it was intentional instead of an old outdated choice.

Here is the carpet with the rug that was chosen.

We started with the sectional which is a reddish leather and we worked from there.

We found this rug that had the reddish color as well as the teal color in the design and it was the perfect starting off point to bringing our colors together.

Next we found these pillows at Target and brought all of the colors in with 3 different pillows but coordinate very nicely with each other.

Here is a better view of the pillows on the sectional,

and here is a picture showing the pillows on the sectional with the rug and the carpet.

Above the sofa we did this arrangement and once again, everything has all of the colors in them, even a hint of the teal color which brings that carpet in once again!

Here is a close up of one of the pictures. You can see that there is small flecks of the teal color in it and works perfectly with everything.

Here is a floral arrangement that I made and I intentionally brought in these teal pods to bring in that color once again.

The fabric for these window valances did not have deal in it but had the other colors in it, so we decided to take a small teal ribbon and sew it on the fringe to bring it in.

We found these vases

and plates that happened to have all of the colors in them!

We were quite lucky to find so many accessories with the reddish color, peanut butter color, and the teal all them and help coordinate and tie in everything.

I actually love the way that this room turned out and it actually makes you like the carpet when everything is taken in. I actually liked this room so much that unconsciously I realized that it was one of the inspirations for my living room that I am working on right now. The drapes are that I am using are the same fabric as the checkered pillows on the sofa, so I am bringing in almost the same colors to my living room as this t.v. room.

That's a good sign :)

If you have something in your home that you aren't quite sure about, see if there is a way that you can make it work and maybe become a piece that you love.

The best way to do this is probably to think about the colors that you are pairing it with. I don't want to go into a lot of detail here on that because it could take me all day to get into the color coordinating and to be honest, every room is different in how I would approach it. But there are ways to make something stand out or you can choose a color to help blend it in and not be so noticeable. This can be a really great way to save money to not have to replace that one thing in your house that you consider an eye sore. You may just fall in love with it :)

Making Of - Living Room Throw Pillow

Last week I decided to make this throw pillow for my living room chair.

I am very happy with the way that it turned & it didn't cost me a thing!

This pillow in all reality would have cost anywhere from $50-$100 with how expensive this stuff is individually, but I have my ways :)

Here is the stuff that I started with: I had a pillow insert that I had purchased years ago for another project and never used. This pillow is a down filled pillow and is a great pillow. The gold fabric was a sample fabric from my old work at Bassett that I had in my fabric stash and would have been probably $20-$30 a yard if purchased. The peachy, gold fabric was a fabric memo that I purchased back when I was in design school. I had a project that I wanted some nice fabrics for, I went to a local designer fabric place and purchased this memo (a fabric sample about 3'x3') for $10. I hate to admit this but that was probably 7 years ago. This fabric is probably anywhere between $50-$100+ a yard!!!! It is such high end silk and is a Beacon Hill brand which is one of the most expensive! Anyway, I got it for the $10 and just had to use a small corner of it for my project so I had a large section of it left over. The red trim was left over from some pillows that I sewed for my family cabin and I believe that it was around $20 a yard.

Here is how I made the pillow:

I took some printer paper and created my own pattern to cut from.

I cut the 2 sides in the peach fabric and then I sewed them to the gold fabric.

I wanted a pleated center so I needed to make the gold fabric larger than what the measurement was.

*I found the center of the gold fabric on the back side and marked it with a pin.

*I measured 2" from each side and ironed it over with wrong sides facing each other.

*Then I measured 3/4" from the ironed edge and ironed it with right sides facing each other.

*From that last ironed edge, I measured 1 1/4" and ironed wrong sides facing together.

You can see a pattern here. Basically you are making an accordion fold but making them overlap a bit so that you can see each individual fold.

Here is what it looks like all finished on both sides pinned down.

After the front was all pleated and pinned, I pinned the front to the back which was 2 pieces overlapping each other to create a pocket.

In each corner, I cut a tassel from the red trim I had and pinned it in each corner.

Now I hope I am not the only one who does this!.... but I pinned the wrong side of the fabric to the back and when I turned it right side out, the wrong side was facing forward!.... So I had to unstitch the whole thing a resew it!

Here is the back side. You can see that I didn't make my flap big enough but I honestly don't care when it is the back!

And here is the close up of the tassel and the pleating.

I love that I was able to create this with stuff that I already had and it didn't cost me a dime (recently). When I get other things done in my living room, I will show a picture of it on the chair with the full affect of everything else. (whenever that happens). Until then, I will enjoy my one pillow in that room :)

Christmas Confession

I normally LOVE Christmas decorating and I was really enjoying myself setting up the week before Thanksgiving..... but I think that the fact that I am 8 months pregnant and still want things permanently done in my house has made it to where I kind of gave up on the Christmas part of decorating and have been trying to get walls painted before I have this little one.

If you are looking for some Christmas decorating inspirations, check out the links on the left hand side column under "Other great design sites".

The Thrifty Decor Chick and The Nesting Place have great Christmas ideas as well as a ton of links to others who are decorating for Christmas.

Sorry if you were looking for more Christmas Inspiration here, but I decided that if I was going to spend any money at all, it would be towards something permanent in my home and not on something that will only be up a few weeks.

When I feel that my home is pretty much decorated, then I think I will be fine spending money on holiday decor.

I can't believe that my baby is due in one month from tomorrow! I feel like I have lots to do still. I went to Home Depot today and bought some paint for my Master Bathroom and the paint guy came up to me and said "I hope you aren't planning on painting" I told him that I was and that I had been painting my entire pregnancy and made sure that I had a heavy duty mask on..... It is kind of funny to see people's reactions when they find out that I have painted my entire house pregnant. I do think that I may have to recruit my husband with this one though, it is getting harder for me to climb up on things. I am hoping to have it painted before Christmas next week so I really need a burst of energy to come my way! :)

Tip Of The Week - Does Your Home Express Who You Are?

When people come into your home, do they know who you are right away?

This is something that I think is very important for each person to incorporate in their home.

Every single room in my home plays a part in expressing who I am as well as my whole family.

First off..... when you first walk into my front door, you see this sign....

If you can't read it, it says "Aloha, Please remove your shoes, Mahalo."

I am very big on people removing their shoes inside of the home so I found this sign in Hawaii a couple of years back and had to have it to let people know that is what is expected in our home and that we would appreciate them following it. :)

The next thing, and I think it is the most important thing(s) to us in our home are our religious beliefs and expressing those in our home.

Now I just want to state that these are things that are important to us and that we express in our home and are not intended to offend anyone if they believe otherwise.

But the very first thing that you notice when you walk into my front room is the large picture of Christ that is hanging above my sofa.

This is one of the few pieces of that we spent a lot of money on in our home and it was very important to me that it was placed basically front and center in our home. I want people to know that when they walk into our home, it is a Christian home with Christian values and we would appreciate it if everyone respected that when they came into our home.

When you walk into our family room, right in the corner against this red/orange wall is our Christus, so once again, a reminder of what is central in our home.

Here are some scriptures that are dear to us from our religion.

and a Proclamation to the Family that was put out by our church.

and here is a picture of where my husband and I were married.

All of these things are incorporated in our main living areas to remind us as well as let others know what is important to us as well as what is "expected" if you will, in our home.

In my living room I have this framed saying on my wall about being an Extraordinary Human Being

it is great for anyone to read as well as a reminder to myself.

Now you have seen this in a previous post before,

but one of the most important things in my life is my family and I want to make that known so I created this framed picture of it.

Now this is something that is in my kitchen window sill now and is a great reminder every time I go to the sink.

As you have seen in previous posts, I have pictures of my family all over my house as well as pictures of my travels up in my office. These are also great things that are up to show what is important to us and expressing who we are.

Because this tip is such a big deal to me in my own personal life, I don't really hang up a picture or something on the wall that isn't something that fits into being important to me or expressing who I am. I do not have any art work up in my home anywhere, I would rather have a picture of a family member or something dear to me than a random store bought painting that means nothing to me..... that doesn't mean that I am against having those in the home, I definitely use them when I design other people's homes if it calls for it. I just prefer in my own personal home having something that is dear to me.

Have you walked around your home lately and analyzed what people are seeing of you in it? If you haven't, I would suggest doing that and making your home personal and expressive of who you are.

Model homes or Parade of Homes type homes are great and beautiful, but every time I go through them, they lack that personality and personal expression touch that I personal believe that every home needs.

I love going into people's homes and seeing who they are. What's important to them... Who's important to them.

Don't be afraid of letting people know who you are..... Your home is meant to be your own personal sanctuary.. right!

Oh Christmas Tree... How I love thee!

For those of you who are return readers, you have probably already seen my post on my Christmas Tree.... but I have decided to join a Christmas Tree Party with the Thrifty Decor Chick so I am posting a few pictures once again.

For you "New Visitors", here is my tree! Pictures don't do this justice but they never really do.. right!

If you want to read more about how I do my tree, you can visit my full Christmas Tree post further down.

I am really big on Christmas Tree Toppers so I have quite an elaborate one but I LOVE it!!

Merry Christmas to everyone!