decorating

I love my house organized but as I mentioned in my post last week Things I Don’t Do, I’m a horrible organizer!

I was checking out a friend’s guest post over at OrgJunkie.com and ran into PROCESS.  While I could use these organizing steps in many, many different areas of my home, I decided to tackle my hall linen closet.

Let me show you a few before pictures.  My closet is in a long hall so it’s hard to capture but I think you’ll see enough to know I was in desperate need of this makeover.

 

 

Yikes!  You can hardly tell there are even shelves—it looks like one big pile ‘o junk!

Head on over to OrgJunkie.com and I have a full post with the after pictures and all the PROCESS steps along the way.  And while you’re there, leave a comment or share the post so they know what wonderful readers you guys are!

Two months ago I put up a post To Bar or Not To Bar trying to determine if we should knock out a wall between our kitchen and dining room.

Most of you confirmed what we were thinking—to bar!

Here’s the before again:

So, Scott has spent the last two months making a bar out of this area. 

Much of the time at the beginning was determining what we wanted to do. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out if I wanted all of that side wall gone or not.

Finally, Scott made the decision for me and took a hammer to the wall.

After we lived with it that way, I determined I just couldn’t handle it completely open.  It was driving me crazy to walk in and see the side of the countertop.  So, we decided on half a wall. 

We also have spent much of the two months thinking we’d put another short cabinet back there with glass on both sides.  However, after we talked to a cabinet maker we realized it was just too much money.  Plus, the open wall let in so much light into the kitchen, we kind of liked it without one.

While the project didn’t take a lot of money, it sure did take a lot of Scott’s labor.

I’m a lucky gal to have a guy that can do all this himself.

So, let me introduce you to our new bar:

 

 

 

We are loving it SO MUCH.  Even Lexi, our change-hater, has taken to it quickly.  The girls use it to eat breakfast and do homework.  When we have dinner guests, the kids sit there.  We find that guests congregate around it and it’s opened the rooms up so much.

 

It’s one of those projects where you just shake your head and wonder why you didn’t do it years ago.

 

Yay!  Today I get to show you the reveal of the laundry room.

Last Friday I posted a last-minute post about how we should paint the laundry room.  We decided to go for the bar in the kitchen and move the cabinets to the laundry room.

Well, after all that, I didn’t really go with any options from the post.

After seeing the pictures, several people suggested tying in colors from the picture on the kitchen wall.

I was trying to step away from the gold/green/red combo but the truth is I live well with those colors.  I’m sorry I can’t have a white and blue cottage house, Internet designers!

 

Alright, here are the befores again:

 

Please forgive all the weird angles.  It’s a REALLY hard spot to photograph well. 

 

Here are the afters!

 

 

 

 

I’m really, really happy with it.  The past few days I’ve been trying to find things to wash just to have the doors open and enjoy the new view.

Just in case you love green and red too, the cabinet and shelf colors are Crushed Cumin and Fireside by Valspar from Lowe’s.  The Fireside comes in one of those ready-made samples for just $3. I’d love to give you the wall paint but it’s the same as our kitchen and was a color match from when we painted years ago.

I’m still thinking about putting some vinyl lettering on each of the doors like “wash”, “dry”, “fold”, “iron” but I haven’t found the right red yet.  Maybe more to come on that.

 

So we finished that on Saturday and then I went to the office this week and the wall disappeared for the bar….

We are still deciding on how much more to take out from that side wall and we have to carefully remove where the backsplash is.

Emma is excited to eat at the bar and Lexi has literally started hoarding food in her room because she won’t forgive us and is planning to live in her room the rest of her life.  Ah, can we say dramatic?

In any case, IT’S HAPPENING and I for one am loving all the changes!

After we started scheming about our new bar—which we haven’t started on yet—we decided that we should take the upper cabinet there….

and move them to our laundry room for a little boost with new wall paint and freshly painted cabinets. 

We haven’t painted the walls since we moved in 9 years ago and who knows how long it was since the previous owners had painted so it’s due.

Wall paint and cabinet paint can totally transform a space.  So many people are doing creative things in their laundry rooms and I want to take advantage of this time since Scott is so willing to clear it out and help.

So help?  Fast?  We want to paint the walls this weekend.

First off, I love color but I’m afraid it can lead me astray and rooms end up looking hokey instead of creative. 

Let’s not discuss the cobalt blue and lime green bathroom we had when we first got married.

First, let’s look at my kitchen and the laundry room as-is.  Here’s several views.

 

And here’s a bunch of paint combos I picked from Houzz.com

 

#1 White wall/white cabinets

 

#2 taupe walls/cream cabinets

 

#3 gray/taupe walls/white cabinets

 

#4 blue-gray walls/cream cabinets

 

#5 cream walls/blue-gray cabinets

 

#6 gold walls/white cabinets

 

#7 cream walls/darker cream cabinets

 

#8 wallpaper/white cabinets

 

#9 gray walls/white cabinets

 

#10 blue walls/cream cabinets

 

Do you see my dilemma?  I picked out TEN combos and that’s not even to speak of finding the right shade of any of those colors.

Help!  Which do you think would look the best in our space?  Feel free to throw out another combo I didn’t even pick.

It’s been awhile since we’ve done any big projects around the house.  It’s been almost two years since we built on our master bedroom addition and since then, it’s just been small things here and there. 

Scott and I are both getting an itch to do something we’ve been batting around for quite some time.  The thing is, I still can’t decide whether I want to or not and I’d really like your input.

One thing I really wanted with this house but didn’t exactly get was an open floor plan between our living room, dining room and kitchen.  While there’s a nice open space to our kitchen, it’s not what I would call open.

 

Please excuse the dog crate with the John Deere blanket.  It’s just what it is.

We’ve been thinking of tearing out these top cabinets, or at least half of them, and knocking a hole through that wall so we have an island with a counter and bar stools.

I’ve been messing around in PhotoShop and while I’m no Layla or Kevin from The Lettered Cottage, I think the photos I did might give you a visual of what we’re thinking of doing.

Option 1 would only knock out part of the wall facing the dining room.  In this way, I can salvage half the cabinets up top and minimize seeing any mess in the kitchen with that short wall.

We’d need to paint the back door as the black is too stark from the living room.

Option 2 would knock out the entire wall above the bottom cabinets.

With this option I lose all my upper cabinets and I’m pretty concerned about the mess at the stove you could see from the living room as well.  We’d have to deal with repairing the ceiling too.  Oh, and our contractor told us we’d need to add a support beam in the attic. 

However, this option really opens up the room and I don’t think it would cost much more.

 

So, whaddya think?  Leave it alone, partial wall or tear the whole thing down?

My friend Linda invited a group of us to a Pinterest party at her house on Saturday.  She had already planned to make a craft for her husband for Valentine’s Day and decided others should join in and make those Pinterest projects we never have time for. 

Can you believe I was at a loss? I scoured my Pinterest boards and there wasn’t even one thing I could make in an afternoon.  I think I see now why I don’t get many of them done.

So, I went scouring for Valentine’s Day themed projects and decided to do these Sweetheart Topiaries.

Source: naturallyestes.com via Amy on Pinterest

Cute, eh?

The site I pinned them from didn’t have detailed pictures to make it so I thought I’d share.

Our supplies:

• Buckets.  Ours were 4 1/2” tall and 4” wide
• Foam for the base
• 4” Styrofoam balls
• 3/16” dowel rods
• Candy hearts
• Coordinating ribbon
• Hot glue
• Ice (you’ll see what I mean)

We had a rough time figuring out the ratios of bucket width to dowel rod width to Styrofoam ball width but I think what we went with worked well. 

We had planned to buy metal buckets and paint them but were able to find some painted ones that worked.  Looking back, I wish I’d had the pink like in the picture but lots of colors work and it’s easy to switch out the buckets after the fact.

First, we cut the foam down to squares to stuff in our buckets.  These hold the dowel rods in place.

Next, we karate chopped the 3’ dowel rods to get them to the size we needed.  Scott says we should have used a saw but I didn’t pack a saw for Linda’s house, so we had to improvise.  The rods need to be about 13” long after you karate chop or saw them.

Put the rod into the foam in the bucket, trying to make it as straight as possible.  Then, attach the Styrofoam ball to the top of the dowel rod, leaving about 6” of rod sticking out.  There is no trick to getting it all straight and that is probably the hardest part of this project.

Next, we wrapped some coordinating ribbon around the dowel rods.  Pro tip from our friend Joy that was there: take the rod out of the foam in the bucket and twirl the ribbon.  Makes it much easier.  Thanks, Joy!

I also would suggest hot gluing the ribbon every few swirls as it wants to sag and gap if you go too far.

 

 

Now, the fun part.  Start hot gluing the candies to the ball.  Tip: don’t apply the glue to the ball first.  The foam melts.  Put the glue on the candy and then situate the candies around each other, making sure to evenly distribute the colors and the angles.

Also? This is the part where you might need the ice.  I burned myself badly at least 3 different times as I was trying to get the glue on the little hearts.  I still have two blisters as I type this.  As Joy said, the real thing that needed blogged is a video of me trying to hot glue these things.  It still hurts thinking of it.

 

 

If you do this right, at some point, your ball will look like a woman in curlers.

 

 

And then you can color a face on her.

 

 

About an hour later, you will have all the hearts glued.  Seriously.  It took almost an hour to do that.

Next, tie a bow on the rod.  If you have a Joy at your party that ties better than you, have her do it.  It worked out well for me.

 

As a final step, we stuffed some paper in the sides of the bucket to fill the gaps and then poured the leftover candy hearts on top  When you get home, your dog will enjoy his new candy dish.  Thanks for eating my Valentine’s Day craft, Tucker!

 

Jenny did the same craft but with red as her theme and I think it looks darling and way more Valentine’s Day-y.

And that’s it!

The two topiaries took us a total of 2 hours.  I admit, I would never sit down for two hours and do these but it was a great Pinterest Party craft!  I’m very happy to say that these will NOT end up on Pinstrosity so I’m considering it a win!

One of my presents this year was getting Scott to finally put in recessed lighting in the living room and kitchen.  I have been wanting to for years but for some odd reason (cough, cough) Scott didn’t want to climb in the attic and do the job.  In the summer, I’d hear it’s too hot.  In the winter, I’d hear it’s too cold.  I can’t say I blame him.  But the weather here has been decent the past few weeks and it was time, baby!

Our living room and kitchen both had dated ceiling fans. Because neither room get direct sunlight, it was dark, dark, dark.  Throw in our dark floors and dark cabinets and dark furniture and the rooms were desperate!

The kitchen from the living room now:

I can finally SEE when I’m cooking and don’t have a huge shadow on what I’m prepping.

 

We added a light above my favorite yellow cabinet from IKEA and picture and gah, I just LOVE it (I think I need to move that picture up, don’t you?).

   

Not only did we add lighting in the living room but we rearranged in there.  Here is the new view from the kitchen.

Folks familiar with our room will see we just flip-flopped the couch and recliner.  I love it though.

 

This is my view from my office instead of looking at our old black leather recliner all day.

 

I love the recessed lighting in the four corners.  Just where everyone sits, there is now light to actually SEE what you’re reading or doing.

 

 

And while we’re talking changes in the house, I’ll go ahead and show you the new green bedspread my mom got me for Christmas and we FINALLY hung a few pictures up above the couch.

Here’s the before:

 

Now:

 

Mom originally bought me an orange bedspread but we just couldn’t find the right shade.  One looked peach and the other was too orangey red.  The green matches perfectly with the couch so it’ll do.

Don’t worry, we’re getting another green sham.  They only had one at the store last week so we have to hunt another down at another location.

I just love how the pictures at the couch tie into the chairs.  I love my funky chairs!

Slowly but surely we are getting our master bedroom together.

Three changes you can take from this to give your house a little boost:

1. Add light to a room.  You don’t have to force your husband into the attic.  Adding a floor or table lamp will do. Even moving a lamp around will change the dynamics of a room.
2. Rearrange a room!  Even the smallest change can make a huge difference.  The flow of our living room is completely different now!
3. Hang up pictures.  I’m sure you have some pictures lying around or some prints that need frames.  Get them on the wall!

Loved coming out of Christmas break with these changes.  Felt like we had a nice new start to our year.  Hope you’re having a great one!

About six months ago I posted a short blurb about us debunking the girls’ bunk beds into two twin beds.  Well.  The two twin beds on the floor weren’t really working for me. 

Their room is forever messy.  I mean MESSY.  I do get it cleaned up every once in awhile, at least every 2 weeks when the cleaning lady comes, but even then, I never felt like it was REALLY clean because the beds were still sitting on the floor since the frame was made for bunk beds.  And most of the time it was a flat sea of STUFF.

I asked Scott to build a frame for the beds so it would be 1-2 feet off the floor.  Well, we all know what happens when Scott starts building.  I knew we were in trouble when Scott walks in from the hall and says, “I think I have an idea for the girls’ room.”

He decided to reuse the book case and desk for bunk beds but to split them up and make them BOTH top bunks.  He used some 2×4’s he had around the house and voila!  We have bunk beds again.

Warning: please do not refer to these pictures for organization skills.

 

 

 

 

As you can see, it adds a TON of floor space.  I like that you don’t see the really messy desk and book case from the door.  I like that a lot of wall space was freed up.  I like that their desk and book case are now a sort of wall unit, hidden beneath their beds.

For anyone curious, here is the inside where he attached four screws from the outside.

 

Scott had it done in less than 30 minutes and the room is completely different.  Lexi was really worried about sleeping up high but when she woke up, she said she loved it.  Works for me.