Living Room Drapes Hung!!!

I am in LOVE!!!!!

I am so excited to finally have my living room drapes hung up! These are what really make the room since I designed everything around these and you couldn't really tell where I was going without these.

I have to give a disclaimer..... My camera does not take good pictures when there is sunlight in a room, it creates this weird glow so of course these pictures don't do it justice! But it gives you an idea... I will post better pictures if I can get them as I progress in this room.

Here they are!

You can't tell real great that there is red in them... love the red!

We live on a corner lot and get a ton of sunlight in this room so it really is hard to get a good picture when the sun is shining in here pretty much all day.

This is a terrible picture I know (window on each side) but I wan't to show the pillow that I made on the chair with the drapes.

These drapes were purchased at Target and were about $22 a piece. The thing that makes these look so great and more high end is the fact that I didn't sheer them onto the rod, I purchased rod rings for them. I have said it before and I will say it again, rod rings add length as well as a more high end look as opposed to sheered on their.

My husband picked out the rod hardware all by himself and I think he did a fabulous job! Once again, notice the rod is a thicker rod which is more substantial looking and makes it look more expensive and higher end.

My funny little $10 ksl chair is starting to make more sense in the space isn't it? I just want to get the wood stained to a darker color and I will be happy with it.

I still have to get some stuff on the walls, pillows on the chair and sofa and some tables or build an ottoman or something..... I am still trying to figure out the best way to layout this room since the furniture isn't centered with each other.

But.... I am loving going into this room now with those drapes up and I LOVE how they completely warmed up the space and made it very inviting!

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!)

Laundry Room Reveal

I am sure that my husband and I are one of the few couples that still share a computer but that is about to change. My husband is working from home now and it has made it pretty much impossible for me to have computer access but his boss is buying him a new computer so that should change in the next week or so!.... So if you have been wondering why my posts have been far and few between, that is the reason.

But.... I am still busy doing stuff around my house in the mean time so I do have stuff to post.

Right before taking off to Colorado for the Thanksgiving holiday, I broke down and decided that I wanted to get my laundry room done and can I just say that I LOVE the way that it turned out!

I think I am one of the few people out there that doesn't mind doing laundry and I think I have figured out why..... I only do laundry once a week and I have discovered that most people laundry everyday and that is why they don't like it!

Well, if you are doing laundry a lot, you are spending lots of time in your laundry room and that is a great reason on why you should decorate that sad room in the corner of the house! :)

Here is my laundry room!

Once again, the pictures don't do it justice.... the paint color isn't very good in the picture but it is a fun light green color.

AND... Once again, I spent pretty much NOTHING!!!!

I bought the green paint for a project I will someday do on my staircase and knowing that I wasn't going to use a full gallon I decided to paint my laundry room with what I knew would be left over.

Here is a picture without the flash.... wall color looks worse in these pictures.

So I have to talk about my words on the wall! LOVE, LOVE, LOVE these! I painted these on... I have the equipment to project these on the walls and paint them and customize them the way that I want so it is easy for me to do this. You could use the vinyl lettering but I am too cheap for vinyl lettering :)

Don't you just LOVE the saying?

I showed a couple of sayings to my husband and he started laughing and said "I think you know which one I want".... Of course we both agreed with "Drop your drawers here"! We both love some humor in our lives so we went with that one.

The paint, both the black and red, were left overs from other projects.

The black boxes were purchased years ago and have been used in various spots for storage. This shelf seemed like the perfect spot in this house.

The red basket was given to us as a house warming gift in my last house and I decided to put toilet paper in it so that it is up high enough from my daughter ripping it apart!

The basket is used for my dirty rags and towels from the kitchen and was purchased years ago at Roberts for about $.13 (yes that amount is correct) and has been sitting in my basement unused.

This shelf was from my last house and was painted with left over red paint from the family room.

Wreath was purchased a while ago also for like $2.50 from my favorite wholesale place Taiwan.

I haven't finished the accessorizing on the shelf yet but I figure I have time for that. The things that are on there are just things I had.

Remember my Inspiration Piece... the rug, it is in there also as well as my $1 waste basket!

So you may remember this mirror from my fall centerpiece. I decided that I wanted it in here instead and hung it up over the existing mirror with some ribbon I had and it just hung on a large nail and I am absolutely in love with the affect!

I did purchase the towel just for this room and it cost me a whole $3.50!

So... if you count up the cost of items recently purchased for this room... that would be a whole $3.50 for the towel and $1 for the waste basket if you want to add that in (I guess the paint also but that was already purchased for another project).

So cheap! And I have to tell you that I love to go into my laundry room now!

Like I mentioned once before, this room is also our one and only bathroom on the main level so I am no longer embarrassed for people to come in here.... I wouldn't be surprised if I leave the door open just so people will want to go in there and look if not to use. :)

*Side note - notice that the ceiling over the shelf is painted the same green color as the wall. I followed the same rule here as I would in a bay window and I am so happy that I did. If I would have left it white, it would have completely distracted from the fun painted words and boxes and I don't want that!

My Office - Preview

I was really hoping to have my office finished by now but that just hasn't happened and probably won't happen for a while.

SO..... I decided I would give you a preview of what I have done already.

The amazing thing about this room... It pretty much cost me NOTHING!!!!

And that includes the furniture!

I really did get lucky with this room. This desk we got a few years ago for Christmas, it was a gift from my parents (I know, what an awesome gift! It was actually money and we chose to get a desk with it). The desk chair we got for free, my husband's work got new chairs and they let him bring his old one home!

The paint in this room was leftover from the accent wall that I painted in the Living Room. I tried to do the really cool leather technique that my sister did her wall, but it looked HORRIBLE on my wall... I think I used to dark of stain... I had to think really quickly and I decided to just take my oiled rag and quickly spread it around and made it look like my other stained walls. I was so lucky that it worked and that you couldn't tell anything different.

This room is right at the top of our stairs as you walk up so it is open to everything. You can see in the front of our desk that we have some glass cubbys and we have a tradition of purchasing a picture frame on every vacation we have and putting a photo of us while on that vacation. We put the frames in these cubbys as well as a few on the desk.

And here are the infamous blue chairs that I believe I am going to keep blue. If you haven't read here before, these blue chairs were given to me by my step-dad. They were chairs in his old work office so again they were FREE!!!! My pictures have a lot of blue in them and the top diamond picture is a painting we got in Cabo San Lucas that is blue so I think blue will have to stay.

I will talk more on picture displays in another post but I love the way that this one turned out. The 3 shelves I bought at my neighbors moving sale and cost me $1.50 for the 3. I had a lot of the picture frames already, but I bought some also at the DI for $1-$2 each and spray painted them all black to coordinate. I still haven't ordered a few of the pictures that will be displayed here so it isn't quite finished. Notice my $5 table between the chairs that I spray painted... I haven't put anything on it because of my daughter, but these picture albums work perfect in the bottom and she doesn't bother them because they are pretty heavy. I got the albums at Potterybarn a few years back with a gift card.

Now please excuse the massive mess on top of the filing cabinet, it is all stuff that still needs to be filed away and I can't do it until my husband helps me since it is his work stuff (as well as the garbage can that my daughter likes to get into :) This filing cabinet was also given to us from my husbands work so was once again FREE! The lamp base was FREE also and I have a curtain rod that was given to me for FREE that I spray painted black and will get hung up as soon as I get hooks to hang it on.

All I need for this room is some fabric so make some drapes and some pillows and I am pretty much done.

I am pretty happy with the way it has turned out so far and I love that it hasn't cost me hardly a dime. Now to just find some fabric that I like with blue in it.....

The best part about this room are the memories that fill it with all of our travels!

Inspiration Piece

When I posted about Brooklyn's nursery, I mentioned my Inspiration Piece.

This quilt was my inspiration piece for that room. I pretty much design every room that I do in this very same way. I won't start designing a room in my home until I have found that piece that inspires that spark of ideas to flow to me.

If you have ever seen Color Splash with David Bromstad on HGTV before, he designs in this very same way and I love that he does it. It is amazing what ideas can come to you when you have that one piece that you love for that room.

Here are some more of my inspiration pieces that have helped spark those ideas for my own home.

Kenidi's Nursery:

I have been working on my baby-on-the-way's nursery and I wanted something different (of course). I was given this brown bedskirt that my mother-in-law made for my twin nephew and niece that they were no longer using. I found this beadboard picture frame at the DI for $2.00 and I loved it just the way it was, and then this is my favorite shirt that I can wear being pregnant (the color is so pretty and I have always wanted to have it in a room).

If I can find a fabric with all the colors in it, I can get started on this room. I have this room designed in my head and it is going to be GORGEOUS but I need to find that darn Inspiration Fabric so I can get her bedding going.

Family Room/Kitchen:

The inspiration for this area was simply the wall color. I found this color and just had to have it. I had all neutral furniture so I could start from scratch and this was the color that I wanted in my home.

Living Room:

The checkered drapes were my inspiration for getting this room going. I had found the sofa and chair and since they were chocolate, I could put anything with it. I wanted something that was different than my family room but that would flow. There are similar colors in each room but they are very different feels. I fell in love with the checkered fabric and I was able to pull the accent wall color from it (the wall behind it) and I was able to go through my fabric bins and I pulled out the peachy and gold fabrics and thought they would look great incorporated in pillows, and then I found the red fabric at the DI for $3.00 and I am going to create a bench/coffee table upholstered in the red. I am way excited for this room to come together but because it is my front room and I want it a little bit more formal, it is taking me longer to get it together and paid for.

Office:

We like to travel a lot with my family and we wanted our office to represent that and showcase all of our pictures. I wanted it to flow with the rest of my house but still have the fun side of traveling and I found this fabric. I actually found this fabric back years ago and I never did anything with it. I pulled it out a few weeks ago and it inspired the whole pull together of my office.

I have a big gorgeous black desk in my office that is VERY Potterybarnesc and I wanted to tie that in with black picture frames. I got this palm tree statue from Mexico and I took this lamp from a Hourder's house (someone who has an addiction to shopping and just buys for the sake of buying and just lets everything stack up in their home). When I pulled this fabric out, all of those ideas started popping out and I am in the process of putting this room together. You can see in the background that I have got the walls painted and stained, I have just been waiting for them to not be tacky anymore so that I can move forward. Can't wait to show you the final product.

Master Bedroom:

There were a few things that actually contributed to my master bedroom. First off, this greenish/bronze colored bedding. This was old bedding of my sister's that she let us take and use while we were finding some bedding that we wanted. Well, it turned out that my husband really liked it and didn't want to get rid of it. I on the other hand, needed more color. I had this red blanket that I had gotten a year or so earlier and wanted to use that. I decided that I needed to compromise with my husband, so I kept the bedding that he liked, but then I added the checkered bedding that I have on there. It is a very layered affect, but it is something that makes both him and me happy. (I know there is a lot of red on my bed, but that will be dispersed throughout the room once I get a sitting area put in.)

This is also something that was important for me to use in the room. These are candlestick holder's that were my grandmother's. I haven't found a spot for them yet, but you can bet that I will try and find a creative way to use them in the room or in the master bathroom.

Spare Bedroom:

I haven't really done anything yet with this room, but I have had these pillows for years. They have been sitting in a box and I decided that I wanted to use them as my inspiration pieces for the spare. I have a lot of orange items that I don't have anywhere to put in this house, so I thought they would work well in the spare bedroom. I am still waiting for that flood of ideas to come from the pillows though! :)

Guest/Kid's bathroom:

My favorite season of the year is the Fall time. James and I had these pictures taken a few years ago and I loved the colors so much that I wanted to incorporate those colors in a room. Well, it went to the bathroom.

I found this shower curtain that had all of the colors in it. I have a few other accessories up in there but the room is so tiny that I can't really do a whole lot with it. Plus, because it is my kid's bathroom, I also have to be practical.

Laundry Room:

I bought this rug a couple of years ago for my front door. It is really flimsy so we didn't want to use it there in this house. I decided to put it in my laundry room and I think it will work great in there. My laundry room is actually our only bathroom also on the main level so it gets seen more than laundry rooms should. Since you can't see the rug colors real great, they are rust orange/red, olive green and golden yellow. I have actually bought the paint already and we are going to paint this room green. I can't wait to actually get going on it and make this room look presentable for people to use it.

Well, there are my inspirations for my house. Do you have something that you love that has helped sparked those ideas. I have found that this is the best way to start off designing a room. Go out and find those Inspiration Pieces that you can use in your home.

My Family Room

I have finally gotten around to taking pictures of my family room and getting them posted. This is one of the few rooms that I have done. I love the way it turned out and how cozy it feels! As I was kind of going through everything in this room and the cost of it, I was amazed at how much of it was given to me! I haven't spent hardly any money in here in comparison to what it looks like.

My sofas were bought 7 years ago and because it has only been James and I, they still look brand new. Back 7 years ago, we paid about $1000 for the set. The coffee table, end table, and console table were purchased at R.C. Willey Outlet for about $550 or so.
ALL of the accessories but the lamp were given to me or I purchased with a gift card! I have a pillow obsession, I know.... The pillows were either made, purchased for a few dollars at a moving sale, or bought a long time ago.
This picture really shows the colors of my room well. I love my wall colors! The small table in the corner was purchased for a very specific spot in my last house that was tiny, I found it at Target for $16. It was an absolute steal. The table that the t.v. is sitting on, given to us by my step-dad, it was a piece he had before he married my mom.
The clock here was made by my sister and given to me for either my birthday or Christmas.
This is my reading corner and once again, I love it! This chair was actually a trade I did so not a penny was spent out of my pocket for it. The baskets, picture, picture frame, and blanket were all given to me for gifts. I honestly didn't realized how many things were given to me until I sat down here, it really is amazing. Other than the furniture and t.v., the only "splurge" I have in this room are my draperies. I am going to go into that another time, but draperies is a place that you want to spend a little bit more money if you can. Hopefully soon I will get some pictures of my kitchen/dining area that flow from this room to show how it all has come together, I just have a few more things to add to that area.