Walls & dots

I finished painting the whole living/dining room this week, and I'm really happy with it.

Before (I chose the color on the left):

After:

I redid the wall over the couch, too. Apparently, I'm in the mood for change. :)

And in this picture, you can see part of another little project....

I "polka dotted" a wall!

It's just gold paper and double-sided tape, so I can take them off if/when I want to. 

In fact, the tape is "removable" so some of the dots have been flying off the wall. I might have to redo it with stronger tape. But I like it!

I'm back

I know I've been a very bad blogger. I was sick with strep throat for a good 10 days, so that's partly to blame.

Once I started feeling better this week, I began painting the living/dining room. I never loved the yellow. I've finished a couple of walls and am about 1/3 done with the room. I love the new color! It's an almost-white grey (Irish Mist by Behr).

Here's a picture from last night:

and here it is today in the natural light:

You can see the old yellow on the wall I haven't gotten to yet here:

Fresh door

With the recent house repaint, I ignored the front door. There was a chance our contractor friend had a nice front door from another job we could have installed here, but it didn't work out. So today I painted the door.

Here's somewhat of a "before" picture:

and here it is today:

and last week I finally (FINALLY) got the interior of the front door from looking like this (latex paint peeling off from oil-based paint):

to looking like this:

So happy!

Hello

I looked on my phone to see what pictures I've taken in the past couple of weeks to post on here, and there were basically none!

Life has been going fine here. Jon and I have been working on painting the rest of the outside of the house after the front now looks so nice.

I bought these copper plumbing pieces at Home Depot and planted tiny succulents in them:

And, as if I haven't been painting enough, I decided finally to repaint the living room/dining room/entry area of the house. I never really loved the yellow and spent all of the past year trying to live with it. I'll get to the full repaint in a few weeks, probably, after I finish with a couple other projects.

House work

We recently decided to replace the old/rotten wood shingle siding on the front and side of our house with composite vertical siding. Using my birthday gift from Grandma and Nannie, we were able to get it done! We did the painting ourselves. It looks so great! Now if we could only get rid of that new vine-type plant the association planted. :)

BEFORE:

AFTER:

We had a very lovely week off from school for Thanksgiving. And now the house is decorated for Christmas!

Over the long Thanksgiving weekend, Jon worked (and I helped) on lofting Lucy's bed. We recently bought the bed from friends who were moving; it's the top bunk to their bunk bed, but we were just using it as a twin bed on the floor. Since it was part of a bunk, though, it already had the ladder, railing, and holes/pegs in the bottom of the legs to make lofting it easier. I looooove it. Now there's more space in the children's room for playing, and we even added that little triangle desk space so Lucy has somewhere to color and draw. 

Filling spaces

I've been trying to decide what to do in the corner space between the TV and the couch. Since I picked up a new dresser for the kids' room, we moved their old dresser into our room and then moved my favorite Nannie and Pop antique, this wash stand, out to the living room. It works great.

Quick house tour

Here's a link to a little tour of the house. Enjoy! :)

House tour extraordinaire

Table tweaks

Finally some kitchen color

Casey and I made some cute hoop art with kitchen fabrics she found. I loooove them. And I saw this cute idea on Pinterest a while back where the person had hung a bunch of vintage bundt pans on her wall in a fun arrangement. I don't have a huge wall to do that, but I decided to put a couple of vintage pans up with the hoops to fill the whole backsplash wall in the kitchen. It's kind of sherbert-ish in there now, but kitchens are supposed to be happy! :)

Here's a bigger view with my favorite light and also the other new art-y thing I made.

I found one more pan at Goodwill last week for $3, and it's hanging above the calendar that lends an even more sherbert-y feel to the kitchen this month. :)

New table

After searching quite a while on craigslist and at various stores for a narrow table for our "entry" area, I couldn't find anything narrow enough (12-13") or, if it was narrow enough, it was poor quality or I didn't like it. My standards weren't that high; I was definitely willing to refurbish something. I just needed it to be narrow enough to fit against the wall and still make walking through the hallway easy.

Then I got the name of a custom furniture builder who does the kind of thing I was looking for and whose prices were reasonable. I told him what I was looking for; he sent me a few drawings, and they were perfect. Fast forward two months, and now I have a new custom console table! And it's teal!

I went "shopping" around the house for stuff I already had and did some styling. I need to fill in some more and get something different to replace the green vase. The lamp (Home Goods) and the mirror ($15 from Ross!) are new. I really wish I could move that silly light switch plate.

Oh and this fun wood bowl is from Goodwill--a fun $4 find.