Guest Room

One of my very good friends is coming to visit in less than two weeks and I have to get our guest room finished. Currently, the room has a bed, a random dresser and a BUNCH OF CRAP. You know, that room you throw all your random stuff in when you have people come over because you want to hide it all? Yep, that's the room. The room is also an ugly shade of yellow - which is a bummer, because I am a fan of yellow, but this yellow is fugs.


Here are some photos of inspiration that I have for this room...

Usually this busy print wouldn't be my thing for a bed, but I really love this and think it would work well! Plus it's on sale at Potterybarn.com :)

I purchased this print along with another coordinating print from Green Nest on Etsy, while I haven't received them yet, I adore them!

I adore this birch tree wallpaper!!! I want to cover just one wall with it. In fact, I have been thinking about it nonstop for a week. Because of it's steep price, I am looking for other options, possibly wall decals?

Chris suggested we paint the room green, and I really like the green paint in this photo!

This room will also be a place for me to store some of my growing deer collection :)



Wish me luck!!! And, you are very welcome to give me suggestions if you know of some cute decor that will go with what I dub my "woodland" theme. :)

Semi Kitchen Makeover: Paint Job!

When we bought our house, we knew there was a lot of work to be done. Not really necessary work per say, but things to do to get it up to par with our style. Well, in the year and a half that we've lived here, we have done quite a few updates. The kitchen has always been one of the top things to we wanted to work on - of course, it can also be one of the most expensive things to remodel!

Here is the lovely kitchen when we moved in:

Well, we don't have a ton of money stashed away, so we are always looking for ways to a) save money, and b) do ourselves. Every time we head over to Home Depot or Lowes, we wander around (mostly the kitchen and flooring areas) just to check things out. We toyed with the idea of purchasing new cabinets before because we really don't have that many of them to being with. Also, our cabinets aren't real wood, not even the doors (just the door frames?). But, once you begin adding them up, it starts to eat your money.

So we ultimately decided that painting our cabinets would be the best bet for us for now. I did a bunch of online research to make sure we would get everything we needed, especially the right kind of paint and primer for the job. If you're thinking about doing this yourself, this guide from thisoldhouse.com helped a lot. Also, if you have laminates, this article was REALLY helpful for us. So yeah, DO YOUR RESEARCH!

A couple of tips:

1. As your a removing your doors/drawers, number them. Especially if you are using the same hardware, if you mix and match, after you are done you may find that things aren't fitting how they should. I just ripped piece of tape and wrote the numbers on them.
2. Make sure you have a BIG work area. We spread out everything in our garage over paint tarps.
3. Don't be too anxious. Most everything I read said to wait 1-2 weeks (sometimes more!) for the paint to "cure". If you put everything back together too soon, because the paint can still be semi sticky, your doors/drawers could possibly stick to the cabinet base and ruin your pain job!
4. Hardware. Don't think that everything you purchase will work for you right out of the package. We had to buy longer screws for our handles than what came with them. We also purchased new door hinges, and tried about 4 different ones before we got one that worked correctly (hint: buy several different types to try, THEN purchase the necessary amount. oops). I think I had to go to the hardware store about 6 different times. Ugh.
   

So yeah, the most important part:

I love love love it! Although the awesome new paint job and hardware make our icky white floors and counters look even more blah, that's okay :)

Edit: Oops, forgot to mention that this only cost about $125 :)

Re-Post: Favorite little table

I wanted to go back and find this old post from 2 years ago, because I still love my little table :) And I probably have tons of new readers (um, I hope?). Enjoy!



This weekend we were cleaning and Chris was re-arranging some furniture in the living room. I have this hideous pink $10 table the was from Ikea and it's been sitting in the living room covered with magazines. Yuck. I had it in my old room back at home when my color theme was grey, white and pink. So Chris says, why don't we re-paint it or something? So all day I was trying to think of the best way to cover the table: paint? wallpaper? contact paper? wrapping paper? I finally got annoyed searching online for a few hours and decided the best and quickest way would be to get some mod podge and cute wrapping paper. I grabbed my mom and we hit up Michaels and Target. And $10 bucks later...voila!

Before:

After:

Lovely Things

Ah, so much going on...yet so little blog about. Let me share with you all a few (or a ton) of recent purchases that I L.O.V.E.

More importantly, NEW CARPET! We used to have those ugly white tiles under there, so gross and COLD! Can you guess what the first thing I did when it was installed? Rolled on it, like a 5 year old. I'm cool.

This whole carpet buying thing was kind of a long process, but OH SO WORTH it. Unfortunately, we still have ugly white tile. Pray for us to save money soon for wood floors :)

They love it, too.

I didn't actually buy this, I WON it from a contest that Michelle Woo had on her blog. The lovely frame was from a company that her sister started, Name That Frame. I got to pick what it said and obviously I gave her some cheesy word ;)

Are those not the cutest little winter birdies you've ever seen? (have you even ever SEEN winter birdies? Probably not!). I got them at a little gift shop at Shaver Lake.


I also got these adorable salt and pepper shakers at the same place as my winter birds :) CUTE.


The best shoes, ever. I had a brown pair of these Sanuk's, but they may or may not have got covered with an explosion of purple nail polish when we went to Michigan.


This big, yellow, warm scarf from Target. I'm kind of obsessed with this color lately, not gonna lie. And I just LOVE this scarf. I'm one of those people that wears something new that I buy basically all. the. time.

I bought this headband from an Etsy shop a bit ago. Seriously so cute. Of course, I do make my own headbands but I just loved this fabric/color combo. Plus, Etsy seller love ftw. I also bought this yellow one. I'm such a sucker for cute hair things.

Oh and just for good measure, a picture of the lovely Sadie McWhinerson.

Hope you all are having a lovely winter! :) Stay tuned for more posts, I promiseeeeeeeee!!!

Before & After: Craft Room

When we bought our house and realized we had 4 rooms to fill up, I knew that one of them would be made into a craft room for all my crafting shenanigans to take place. Well, as all things go...the craft room wasn't on the top of the list and almost a year later, it's finally pretty much set up! (I think I re-painted it like...2-3 months ago, LOL! I am so slow).

Here is the, um, beautiful room before:

Apparently I only took one picture back then because of the obvious beauty this room held...

And now...

Come on in.

Nope, didn't bother to vacuum for you guys. Sorry 'bout your luck :)

Pretty much my favorite shelf ever. The little birdies and the cute lantern I got up at a gift shop in Shaver Lake (where our cabin is). The little dealio on top is something I got at Target a while ago.

Probably a bit too much light here. Anyways, got the bookcase at Target for like, $20. You can kind of see the black shelf to the side of it. I got it at a yard sale a LONG time ago and just painted it black. Not sure where to hang it yet. Ideas?
PS @wishcake, see the vase?! Yeah, that was supposed to be filled with pussywillow (hehehehe). FML.

This shelf is the most amazing thing ever. I got it at Michaels, but I had a 40% off coupon so it wasn't all too expensive. See those little metal tins with the see-thru tops? $1 each at Michaels! I got a 12-pack of Ball jars a while ago, and that is where I store my feathers for my pins.

I couldn't handle the ugly closet doors, so I just took them off. Chris bought me some shelves at Home Depot and I hung them myself. ALL BY MYSELF (I won't mention the fact that I hung them up backwards the firt try). So yeah, a few shelves for random crap, one for candle making supplies, and one for sewing supplies. Works like a charm.

Workspace. The shelf is from Ikea. I actually got it when we first moved in, but never found a good spot for it. Uder the shelf we hung a curtain rod, which I used to put those little clippy curtain holders on. I'm hanging a few scissors from there now but I inteded to hang pictures/inspiration, etc. I also need to find a cute fabric to cover the cork board with...ahh, another project.

This tray is the cutest thing ever...yet another thing I got at a gift shop up at Shaver Lake. I use it to transport craft projects to the living room while I watch Lost ;) My little sewing box is from JoAnn's.

So I guess that's it! There's a few little things I want to do still in there but for now it works just fine. I obviously have plenty of space to do whatever I need to do. I love it <3>

Busy Bee!

Dudes, I've been NONSTOP the past few weeks (okay probably more than that, and let's not count my partial laziness this past weekend...). So without further adieu, the much not-requested "what the heck have I been doing?", in pictures and other things.

Watching Chris put up new "wood" blinds (hey, we're on a tight budget here! faux wood blinds FTW!). These babies are cat proof. Does anyone else have cats that tear the crap out of their cheapo vinyl blinds??? Hmm...probably not.

Making the garden grow!

Waking up twice a night and early in the morning to let Sadie McWhinerson out to potty. While we're on the subject of Sadie...if you don't already know, we took her to the vet and found out that she is a MINIATURE Aussie. Apparently we got a 92% discount!!! I always knew I was frugal :) Oh and we're not supposed to be taking her on walks or to the dog park just yet...oops. So that means she has been a little shiiiiiaaat, driving us NUTS. Children will be a breeze when the time comes.

Crafting a little bit :) Shameless plug? Whatev, I need to make a living, yo!

We also installed new lighting fixtures, all by ourselves (Mommy, WOW! I'm a big kid now!!! ...ok that sounded cooler when I sang it in my head)!!! Bye bye 90's glistening gold crap!

Oh also, cutting back my internet purchases. Sucks right?? Dang you ETSY! When you have a good chunk of extra money...you tend to not really budget as well as you should...then it's all gone and you wonder what happened. Yeah, that would be ME!

Somebody stop me!!!!!!

I have a serious issue, and I know at least one other person can feel me on this one. I order WAY too much stuff online. Let me take you through what I have bought JUST this week.

Steph reminded me that I needed to order this fire pit before it get's too hot. Darn!

I was looking for a new collar for Sadie (the one she already had when we got here is all worn out), and I found this one. With hedgehogs. So I just HAD to it it, duh!

Found these on Etsy, of course. Hole-less buttons, genius. I can't reveal yet what I'm doing with these, but if it turns out well I'll show you soon :)

I've been looking for some spiffy looking art for the kitchen, and decided to order these. I really wanted 1 or 2 more from this store, but I stuck to my 2-item budget. That's a good thing though, right???

This is a dog tag for Sadie. I actually didn't order this one this week, but it came in the mail this week (counts, right?). Isn't it cute? I've ordered 3 other tags from this sweet lady. Loooove.

I'm actually surprised I didn't order more stuff this week. I'm sure I was thinking about getting about 10 more items...but noticed that I had to pay bills. Ooopsies! Don't you hate that!!! In all fairness to myself, I make sure I find the best deals on most everything I get...buying things online usually turns out much cheaper than going to a store in town (at least that's what i tell myself). I also LOVE getting stuff in the mail, who doesnt??

Front Yard Planter: Before & After

Can I just get an amen please?

This is before we moved in:

And this is now:

It took a lot longer than we thought, but it's now completely done...I cannot wait to get the rest of the yard looking this good :) And I am so glad we did it all ourselves, there's something so rewarding about DIYing, dontcha think? Now grow plants, grooooooowwww....

Rocks Suck

The past two weekends we've spent ripping out our front planter, buying new plants and things, and (finally) starting to plant flowers this past Sunday.

We moved into our house the end of September, and our house had been vacant for over a year, so the yard was already looking pretty sad. But since then it got cold...rainy...yadda yadda, we haven't really been able to deal with the yard until now! (and now...it's just REALLY bad). So this is what we've done so far. Sorry for the crappy cell phone pictures, I'll update in another week or two when it's actually complete.

Clearing out the rocks, and the very convenient meshing underneath them.

Tundra is a good helper :) See the lovely bushes?

Rock removal: done.

Almost there...!!

I won't even gross you out with the amount of nasty bugs and spiders we uncovered when uprooting the bushes...SO NASTY!!!! (If you know me well, you know even the teensiest spider makes me scream and run..far...FAR away!) Sooo, this is the only remotely pretty thing about our front and backyard right now (except for these trees). Our backyard grass was all dead when we moved in and now it's all WEEDS. Not to mention that the grass in the front is filled with weeds too. I'm not talking itty bitty weeds you can just pull out with one hand real quick-like...these are gigantic monster weeds that require a shovel and a bottle of allergy medicine to conquer!!!

Hopefully we can finish soon without my allergies killing me :)