Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Connecting Two Rooms

I really wish I wasn't so indecisive, I really have a hard time to commit to something. With the dining room, I "hummed" and thought long and hard about the effect I was going for. I wanted clean and contemporary, yet warm and inviting. How was I going to achieve both those effects in that room. I don't think I've come to that yet, like you have seen in a previous post, I made beautiful grey and white striped curtains.

I "loved" them (yes you read that right...."loved" as in past tense.) See I told you, hard at making a decision. I thought I would always love them, but they are not me. Once the room came together, it was just TOO cold and well, like hubs said "too white". Everything was grey or white and it really didn't go with the warmness we were trying to achieve.

While searching the internet all weekend, trying to find that one picture that screams "that is what I want" I came across one. It was like a light come one. The kitchen has similar counter tops (well mine are laminate- but the colors are close), I just fell.in.love!

You can't really see it but the subway tiles are in two tones and are beige in color, something I think I could easily achieve with a tile like this: 
and this is my counters, butterum granite.


The cabinets are painted in Sherwin Williams Antique Ivory with a coffee glaze over them. My cabinets are very similar to this, so I could easily paint them and apply the glaze. The wall color is a.maz.ing! I love it, it's Restoration Hardware Bay Laurel. I would probably hunt for something similar to it since I don't have a RH locally. This is the color...I love the hues and how in one right it reads green and it other lights it reads blue....



I am sorry if this dining room post turned into a kitchen renovation post. I am just itching at getting that room started.

Here is the beautiful ikea sink that I want, but I just want a single bowl. Now tell me why, I still haven't figured this out yet. Ikea will ship the double but not the single bowl? I only want the single.....sigh.
and what is a sink without a beautiful faucet, I love this one from Home Depot



So now you can get a real feel for how I want my house to feel like. Beachy, coastal, warm and inviting and the grey in the dining room just isn't doing it for me. Although, I may be able to keep it if I change the curtain fabric. Maybe to something like this one...all the colors are in this striped material, grey, aqua and green.

Here is my inspiration put together, all next to each other. I think the colors could work together.


So, here I am at a crossroads. Trying to make the most out of a paint situation that looks like it may have been the wrong choice. Let's see if I can make this work.


Monday, September 23, 2013

Paint can do wonders


I painted. Yes that is correct. I bit the bullet and painted the dining room. I went through 50 million 5 tester cans of different colors. I couldn't decide. I didn't get a tester can of this one, will I regret it? Who knows. The color is Behr's Burnished Clay, has a beigy grey feeling...kinda like a greige.

I started by prepping the room, taping everything.


Then I went around and cut into all the corners. My mom was here to watch the kids for the morning, thank goodness because I would never have been able to do it all with them. Here is another view of the room , before the first coat went on.


Here is the room with one coat on and before I painted the sideboard. 


I wasn't just painting the walls, I had to paint the sideboard as well. That pine color really dated it. So off the doors go....



one coat of BIN primer....(look at the difference in the room already, so much brighter)



several coats of white paint....


on the sideboard itself as well...


This is a close up of the paint color....


It's nice but I am not completely sold yet. Wait until you see the room all put together.....until next time ;-)















Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Trendy Tot Tuesday: A mini (unplanned) photo session


So it is that time again, I am linking up with the ever so fabulous KellyMegan and Lindsay for another Trendy Tot Tuesday ( or TTT whatever floats your boat) I've missed the past few TTT because of, well, life. It got in the way (dang it) and I went back to work (part time but last week I work 4 days- I'm a substitute teacher, so technically I could work full time in one week and not in another) Okay, enough chitter chatter about me, let's see what we have in store for this lovely Tuesday morning (and by lovely I mean curl up and cry because I am so dang tired, my 4 year old decided that 3:30am was morning and woulldn't.go.back.to.sleep!!! Argh!)

Here we are , back to school and work but that doesn't mean we can't have a fun weekend morning play session outside and while dressing Miss M up for little mini photo shoots is super fun, sometimes it is great just to catch her in the moment and most of the times those are the best smiles I get. She loves to run around and get dirty but she is also my little girly girl. A couple weekends ago we headed outside to play and I bought the camera for fun. This is what I captured.

Hi I'm cute.

Fine one more smile momma.

No more I'm running away.

Please mom, I want to swing!

So sometimes we have to remember to take the camera out even if we don't plan on taking pictures because you never know when the mood might strike our little ones.




Thursday, September 12, 2013

Back to Work Woes

So this is what happens when I start a blog in the summer, I'm off all day long. Therefore I can post whenever I like. I can type up a post while the kidlets are napping or when they are playing so very well civil to each other. Now it's September which means kids are back to school and so are teachers, so alas substitutes are needed and that is where I come into account. I've been working pretty much every day since school started back. This whole full time employment and mother thing is tough work. I barely have enough time to think straight let alone type up a post, take pictures, edit them and then get it all published. I promise that I won't stop posting, I have a million ideas for posts and I can't wait to show y'all some great things I've been doing around the house. I am also thinking of adding a "What I Wore Wednesday" since I am working I've been trying some new styles and doing a little lot of shopping.

Monday, September 9, 2013

It all started with curtains

Ok. So I started the playroom once I had the inspiration fabric, I was on a roll and I wanted to get that room finished. Of course being who I am, I spend a little way too much time on pinterest and I came across this:
and this...
 and this one...


and finally this one:

I was in love, no seriously these curtains are the bees knee. I love them, but as some bloggers were doing was buying these shower curtains from West Elm and adding an additional band of fabric. No, I'm too cheap (seriously I am) spending $42 one one shower curtain (although now they are on sale for $32) So I went to the fabric store and bought myself 10 meters of fabric (5m of each color) and started to make curtains....

for the DINING ROOM! It was a project that I wasn't anticipating to do. When we moved into this house 4 years ago, I knew that I wanted to update the color on the walls. I mean, it wasn't that these colors were horrible. I could live with the colors for a while, it wasn't like they were so unbearable like our first house. Man, I wish I had pictures of some of the rooms, they were just un.be.lieve.a.ble! Here's an example of what we HAD to change
That was our kitchen, mushroom wallpaper and all. It was so gross!

Yes, folks that is a forest green ceiling!

and this was the best worst room ever! Black, red and wallpaper.

So when we bought this current place, one of our criteria was a move in ready place. If we wanted to do work we could in the future. So fast forward, here we are 4 years later and I was sick of this: 

So I decided to change it. I started with the curtains, and of course it had a trickle down effect. If I was making new curtains I might as well paint and finish the entire room.  Here's the curtains, I think I did an okay job with them, being the beginner sewer that I am. The lines stayed pretty straight (I hope)and here's how I did it.

I started by buying my fabric (of course) Then I had to cut all of my strips (20 in total, 10 white & 10 grey) 

I used a table cloth runner as my guide, it was the perfect width for each stripe. I then iron all of my pieces. I really wanted to skip this step, but you can't. 

Then I head to the sewing machine and sewed two pieces together. Once I finished them all (10 in total) I headed back to the ironing board and iron each panel. 



Then I repeated these steps again until I had a total of 10 stripes on each panel. After that, I lined the panels with a cheap ($5.97) curtain from Wal-Mart and sewed that on and voila, I have curtains. I am. in.love with them. Here's a breakdown of the cost:

5 meters of grey fabric- $13
5 meters of white fabric- $7
2 cheap curtains for lining-$12
thread-$8 (I needed 3 spools)
Total= $40

So I guess in the end I could have bought the West Elm shower curtain and it would have saved me a lot of time and energy but at least this way I have custom curtains (I have to look at the bright side) and also my curtains are also 48" wide where the west elm ones would have only been 36" wide. So here they are hanging in my dining room, I still love them.


Now I have to finish the playroom. Off I go....

Friday, September 6, 2013

Mommy Fall Fashion

Pumpkin Spice Latte, jeans, boots, over sized sweaters, football, flats and scarfs. All of these things remind me of autumn. I love the fall season. It makes me giddy with glee. It's the time that all my television shows return to TV (waiting patiently   for Parenthood to start back up), children return to school (although that also means I return to work), and the thing that I love the most is the clothing. After a long hot summer I look forward to being able to wear jeans and sweaters. I can not wait to dig out my scarves. It's the best time of year because you don't need to bundle up in crazy layers like in the winter time but you can wear a sweater without sweating to pieces. Most of my favorite fall looks are very casual and I can probably get away with wearing them on a casual Friday but not during the week to work.

I just love this layered look of the short shelve sweater over a long white tee.



I usually host Thanksgiving and I am totally wearing something like this.

I could probably wear this one to school. Perfect sweater dress paired with boots and a scarf.

Love these boots.

Leggings. Need I say more?!

Love the skinny jeans with boots and the plaid under the over sized sweater.



I am *in love* with the over sized poncho sweater with the boots and skinny jeans. You could also throw on a white long sleeve tee if it's a cooler day.

Evening date night with hubs. 

So now that I've covered some of my favorite casual looks I should throw in some weekday school looks.

Great for school. I simply adore plum and pencil skirts!


Perfect! dress, belt, scarf and flats. All ready for work and fall.

{all original sources can be found here

All these looks are making me have the urge to head out shopping and buy some new things. I need to go through my closet first and see what I have to work with and what I will need. Will I have the will to wait? We'll see ;)

Tuesday, September 3, 2013

The difference a year can make

I'm linking up with KellyMegan and Lindsay for another Trendy Tot Tuesday!

I can not believe that it is September, seriously, Sep.tem.ber!! Back to school, back to work and my baby boy turns 4! Yes, four years old! Where in the world has the time gone. One minute I was overdue thinking that he would never make his entrance into this world. He was 14 days, 2 long, hot weeks overdue. I was even induced for 3 days and he didn't want to leave. He was super cozy and didn't want to go anywhere. He finally did arrive and he was a beautiful, healthy little boy. *sigh* and now he'll be 4 *tear* Anyways, this weekend was full of fun and a lot of relaxation. No big plans for the long weekend, it's the last weekend before school heads back, which means I will be back to work.

Tuesday marks my baby big boys second year of preschool and his first year in a program called "Kinderstart" It is a program that'll prepare him for primary (kindergarten) next year. I can't believe the difference in him from last year, when he was just starting preschool for the first time. He seemed such the little boy.



Compared to this year. He looks like such a little man *tear* 
(this picture was taken with my cell phone from my DSLR)

Another big difference besides age is last year I could pick out his clothes. You'll notice the nice plaid Janie and Jack shorts from last year. This year he picked out jogging pants and bought himself a tee shirt from WalMart that has Tree Rex (from Skylander) on it. Oh well, he's happy. I'm happy. Isn't that all that matters?