Wednesday, June 15, 2011

[our house]



okay!  i said i was going to post about the recent projects we've completed... i was finally able to take some pictures of our play pen (i call it that because it's always full of little tikes and toys) during the ten minutes it stayed clean!
jack's blessing was the perfect excuse to freshen up the house.

once the wheels started spinning and my motivation kicked in, i had all kinds of stuff i wanted to do to this place! i knew i couldn't go super crazy due to time and money, but it's amazing how far a little fresh paint and a few new accessories can go!  i really should have taken some before and after shots.  why must i always forget to do this?  i guess it's not that much different.

so here's what we did with our kitchen and family room area.

first off, like our master bedroom, we sam painted our vaulted ceilings white.  again, such a huge difference this made in the overall lightness & brightness to this north side of our house.
such a crazy hard and big job, but, i think if you were to ask sam, he'll agree it was worth it.  he did an incredible job!

next, i painted stripes on our island pony wall to match the backsplash stripes i had painted previously (like 5 years ago).

i replaced our tan/gold chandelier shades with crisp white ones
and my island lamp with this glass base with white drum shade one.

and finally, i added this daily bread print art that i made with photoshop.
i saw this saying on similar artwork, but i needed a vertical picture instead of horizontal, so i designed this (below right)
and threw it in an ikea frame :)
done.
next came the surprisingly hard task of finding new throw pillows for my sofas.
this yellow and white flower one was found by a tip from kirsten at 6th street design!
much of my inspiration and ideas have come from her!  love her!  she's so amazingly talented!
but i had no idea how much work went into finding the right combination of pillows. 
i went from store to store, website to website in search 
of the right colors and patterns that would mesh well and jive with what i already had goin' on.
do you recognize the words spelled out on this our house print above?
the lyrics are from crosby, stills & nash's our house song that i've always loved.
one night i was lying in bed with this tune in my head and came up with the idea to re-write 
the lyrics a tad and make a poster fitting to our family.  kinda fun.
so, the biggest lesson i learned about myself is that
i don't do spray paint!
for the life of me i can't make it look good!  everyone talks about how fast and easy it is.
that is so not the case for me!
i need serious lessons.
these enjoy it words ended up taking me hours to fix after a botch spray job.  i ended up hand brushing them out with a primer & re-painting.
so, if you have any advice or tips, i'll gladly take them!
i shared my spray paint woes with my cute cousin-in-law stacy from not just a housewife and she told me to apply many light coats 
and also to not buy the cheap stuff.
i'm scared to try again.  it just made me so frustrated!
i think naturally i'm just a lay it on thick kind a girl.  i'm comfortable with a brush.

next comes painting the walls in our front office.
we've painted a test swatch and i think it'll look really sharp!
here's the color we've chosen.  
now we just need to plan a party to force us to get it done!  

ciao



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