What a difference the right shade of gray can make

Ive been living with a dark gray on the walls for about a year now and I've finally come to the conclusion that its bringin' the place down! It has seriously made me sad. So I've started the reprinting process.

 

As you can see, it was just too dark and became dingy looking within a year.

The lighter gray has brought more light to the space and more little people under walkers! I'm also moving some things around as I go (surprise, right).

 

Here's my trendy color coordinated book shelf.

No post would be complete without a Violet photo bomb!! The room would nearly be naked without her in it!!

 

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The "after vacation pile"

If you have any number of children, you know about this "pile" that invades your house after vacation.

Ah yes, there it is! This is what it looks like when our car throws up in our kitchen. The best thing you can do for yourself is to clean it up and move on with your life! I'm a big fan of taking care of things right away. How about you? Do you take care of things right away or are you a procrastinator? Do you have a certain way you like to unload after vacation? Pull from the car and put away as you go, or make the "pile"?

 

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Plant room love!

Happy Friday to those of you who get weekends! For anyone with kids..................... Only 18 more years until you can sleep in on the weekend! Woohoo!!

It has been an incredibly rough week. We had the lovely stomach bug pass through the house taking up residence in Lucy and then the next day she did her flying leap off of the top bunk. With a concussion and stitches, we struggled this week but we are through the storm now and she is again jumping on beds. Sigh. Thus is the life of a mom!

With the conclusion of the basement painting I decided to take on the plant room. It was a much easier task (minus sickness and injuries)!

 

I made some small but effective changes. This is what it looked like before. I think this is the only before pic that I have.

Here is after! I used the rest of the paint from the laundry room (don't waste paint). I also painted all of the base trim, door trim, and the sink base (yes! My plant room has a sink!).

I previously had nothing on the walls so now it feels more loved! I also will probably be very busy making pillows this winter for the couch.

Isn't this a sweet little corner?! Jeremy changed out all of the electrical outlets and switches to make it look cleaner. This is the perfect place for my "H" which is not a favorite item of Jeremy's!

This room has sliding doors so I can keep the kids out and me in! The perfect place to eat chocolate and not have to share!!

 

Love the sink since this room is quite far from the kitchen!

 

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The big chill

Little post today! Is your refrigerator/freezer ancient like mine? Does it have any weird issues that you just live with because old things just do that? My Aunt and Uncle had a refrigerator that would tweet like a bird when it ran. It was giggle inducing! Some cousins that read this may remember this. Ahhhh, memories! Mine just has a leak in the ice maker somewhere (which I can't find) so it freezes up every six months and then runs water into the refrigerator. I have chosen to just tear it apart and thaw it out every so often.

Here is what it looks like when it freezes up.

I just take the bottom out, the back off and the ice maker out and pour hot water over all of the ice. Then put it back together and were new again (for 6months)!

Short and sweet, right? Maybe boring too, but sometimes that's how life is!

 

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Window dreaming

Hello friends! Some of you may have missed a post from me last Friday. I apologize. Sometimes life happens and kids take over. We'll leave it at that!

I had the opportunity to escape with Kaci and do some window shopping dreaming. After some clothing shopping looking and a quick run through the Goodwill, we went to Ashley furniture. Here are some things that caught my eye.

The picture doesn't do this sectional any justice! It was seriously fuzzy and comfy!! It may even fit our whole family!

I love these Ikea type shelving units. Since I don't have an Ikea nearby and they want $350 in shipping for an $80 bookshelf, these would be a great alternative. They are twice as much as Ikea but still very nice.

Here a smaller one. I really like these and see them in my house someday.

I really loved this!

This mirror was $150 but Hobby Lobby had a similar one for $69!

These were my favorite find of the day! I could have just backed my pathfinder up to the shelves and loaded them up! Half off too, but I was just looking during this trip.

Ahhhhh. Good finds and a lot of fun! Hope your weekend was as great as ours!!

 

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Flea Market finds

Last weekend was the flea market so I have to have my monthly flea market finds post! As usual I had to go through twice. Once with the kids and once without. I ran away with three good finds. A rabbit, a plant stand and a record stand. The beginning of a good joke? Nope, just some random goodies!

Here's the rabbit. A whopping $.75 worth of cuteness.

Now, it's an ok rabbit but it reminds me of the chocolate ones you get at Easter and I couldn't chance his head getting bitten off.

Here's his makeover.

 

Woohoo! All bow to the high gloss white bunny! Secretly, I was also afraid that if I saw the brown version from across the room I would mistake it for something not so cute.

The record stand is similar to one that I've been eyeballing on Urban Outfitters. That one was down to $25.00 last week and I bought this one for $20.

 

I plan to put a record player on top when I can wrestle one away from Jeremy! Other than that, I don't have anything else to do to this piece! Yay, simplicity!

The plant stand that I bought is definitely going to need some work. Here she is.

It's a little rusty and a lot wobbly but for $2 I have lots of room to work with it!

Don't you love good deals?!

 

 

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Feeling trendy

Do you have lots of books? We do! I've seen a lot of designers coordinating colors on bookshelves lately and I thought I'd give it a go. Actually, it was kind of fun watching Violet and Lucy search for books in the color I was asking for!

This is what my shelf looked like before.

Here's the result of our hard work!

I did a little chair switcheroo too! I bet you're going to rush right to your bookshelf and color coordinate........... Right?

 

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Three cheers for a great day!

I love those days when you work your tail off and finally your hard work pays off!! All in one day, the part for the dryer came, and I finished painting the big room in the basement! It feels like such a relief. Secretly, I thought painting this room was going to kill me! It's such a big room. Even more secretly, I was almost done when I started thinking maybe I wanted it a different color. Whaaaatttt?! Yep, you heard me. This room and I need to just chill away from each other for a while and then I'll revisit that thought.

This is the result in the toy area. I plan to make a cushion for the bench so they can sit and read and I want to put some book shelves on the wall.

 

 

I still want to paint the door trim too. This is why I thought maybe I needed to add color in the room. With white trim and walls, it could make the carpet stand out too much. This project was more about brightening up the space and not really about style. There are three coats of paint on everything. This was all done with leftover paint that I had so it didn't cost me anything to do!

I've celebrated my basement victory by cleaning and moving furniture around upstairs and watching Keeping Up With The Kardashians (don't judge me). I also celebrated by helping a friend fix her dryer which ironically broke down a few days after ours! She and I were successful in our fix and we didn't even have to have Jeremy's help! Go girls!!

The end of a project always gets me excited to start the next one! I have lots of little projects that just involve a can of spray paint or changing out some outlets and lighting. I also have all of the supplies to start our master bedroom so that is probably my best choice. The poor room is wicked ugly!!

 

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The dryer died........ I have not.

After all of my hard work to fix up this laundry room and make it a beautiful place, my dryer then says to me, "I'm outta here sister!" I haven't done any laundry for a few days so its a pretty ugly site to behold considering I'm dryerless. First things first.

This towel really is hanging in our master bathroom and, although it was a gift to Jeremy from Ellenor, I have often needed to see it. Today was one of those days.

The dryer runs but doesn't produce any heat so I figured we were in need of a heating element which is not a quick fix. So, after looking at the bath towel, I channeled my domestic engineer and made a clothesline.

 

It was a nice, windy day so I thought this would be a piece of cake getting all of this laundry done. WRONG!! It started raining thirty minutes after I hung the laundry out. So I had to resort to this.

Hahahaaa!! This cracks me up! I did move the line down to the basement later.

Once Kaci got home from school I got to work taking the dryer apart and cleaning out the bottom lint catcher. It was pretty full so I had better do this more often. I also took the hose off of the back to be sure that it wasn't plugged. It wasn't so at that point I plugged it back in and turned on the dryer with the front panel off. From there I could see that the heating coil wasn't getting red so I figured that was the answer.

Violet was so proud of herself for taking this picture!

Since I have a fabulous Electrical Engineer for a husband, I decided to let him take it from there when he got home. He tested everything to make sure we were getting enough volts and to also rule out the fuse to the heater. After all of that checking out ok he removed the heater coil and tada! Pay dirt. It was snapped in half. I will be hanging out laundry for up to 5 days but there are worse things.

 

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Come together, right now, over me

Yes, that's right. The Beatles have inspired me to do things in each room of my home that create a uniform look. A house that flows well brings a more peaceful feeling and I'm feeling calmer just thinking about it. Everybody breathe in deeply................... And out. Namaste. Whoa! Ok, sorry, I got lost in my inner John Lennon for a minute! So who wouldn't want more peace in their life, right Jeremy and Kaci? ( just a little shout out to my noise lovers here at home).

Our beautiful 1973 home has plain woodwork of the medium brown variety. Fun, right?

This is how it all looks. It makes me sad so I'm painting all of it white.

Here is an example of the newly painted white trim in Sally's room. It makes the house so much brighter and by painting all of it throughout the house, it will pull the rooms together and make it more unified.

 

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