So we took the next step in our bedroom make over and bought some new bedding! We added some new Euro pillows for more depth and went with something lighter and closer to our style. Added bonus is there are no holes from our cats! They ripped up our other one when they were kittens.
Here it was before:
And I might have gone a little crazy and gotten new towels and a new shower curtain for our bathroom…
Have a good week everyone!
We started this project a few weeks ago, thinking it would be done in one weekend. Sadly, that got drawn out 3 more weeks. But finally we’re done (for now)! It’s the most recent step in several little changes in … Continue reading
After much deliberation, the kitchen finally has one uniform color on the walls instead of ugly brown, white, and 10 or so sample paint swatches–the state it has sat in for the past 3 months. Painting the counters opened up some doors color wise as we didn’t have to work around the pink anymore. This room doesn’t get much light so we started thinking a yellow might be fun. It would brighten things up and bring a warm color into our house that is mostly gray right now. The color we decided on is Martha Stewart Yellow Gerbera (color matched to Behr Ultra from Home Depot).
To refresh your memory, here are some before pictures:
Here is what it looks like now:
It’s definitely brighter! Almost too bright with our harsh lighting. I kinda wish it looked more like this:
But at this point I’m leaving it as is for a while. We still plan to replace the black outlets with white and take out the blue backsplash and replace that with white beadboard that will wrap around until right before the window. Maybe that will tone it down some…we’ll see! Anyone else have a yellow kitchen or have any painting projects going on?
A couple weeks ago I posted about how we painted our countertops and how thrilled we were with the results. Well I have to come back and give an honest update that this product is perhaps not as heaven-sent as we thought. We thought the performance would be similar to our laminate counters and it has proved to be not quite as durable. We may not have waited long enough before we started using them, but we quickly learned we need to be cautious as we use them. We had a bowl on the counter that we filled with hot food (the bowl itself wasn’t hot) and it left this mark:
Then I tried to clean off another mark with the scrubber side of the sponge and it ended up making it worse leaving this mark:
We have also gotten a few knicks in the paint. That being said, I still DO NOT regret painting them. I mean I only paid $20 for a completely different look to my kitchen. And for $20 I really can’t expect the Taj Mahal. And I would still recommend the product to people with ugly laminate counters that can’t afford to change them out YET with the disclaimer that it shouldn’t be your end goal but rather a means to an end. And that while using them, just be aware that you’ll need to handle with them with care.
I have since touched up those areas that got messed up and now we make sure to never put anything warm/hot directly on them and to not use the scrubber side of the sponge, but only the soft side. As long as we follow those “rules” they work just fine for now! But after singing praises, I didn’t want you all to try out this product misinformed.
Have a great weekend everyone!
So I posted a couple weeks ago about my potential plan for our bedroom here. And that I had no idea on the timeline for it to come to fruition. Well looks like it’s starting sooner than later because I found the perfect rugs at a great price and couldn’t pass them up!
I wanted an over-dyed persian looking rug, which can run up to $1000+ which I was not willing to spend. I came upon these synthetic ones that looked really great online.
They seemed to fit the bill so I went for it. I was holding my breath hoping they were just as good in person…which I’m happy to report that they are! So now we have these in our room and it is nice having a soft/warm surface to step out of bed onto. And our kitties love to attack imaginary mice on them!
The rest of the process will be slow going, one step at a time. As you may have noticed by the paint swatches hanging on the wall, I think the next step will be to paint. I’m excited to get started on it!
Also, i’m finally painting our kitchen walls today! So look for a post about that shortly!
So. We painted our countertops. That sounds scary and gross doesn’t it? But really it’s not. Because we used this amazing product!:
Which I first became aware of after reading this post at one of my favorite blogs. It is an epoxy paint, not a regular paint so it becomes this hard shell. It is not meant to be a permanent solution, but is a GREAT solution for the interim. We plan to put in hard surface counters in a year or two, but for $20 at Home Depot, you can’t beat the drastic impact this can make on a room! As you may remember, our house came with pink scratched laminate countertops:
And they amplified my not-so-favorite backsplash we also inherited. So, of course I was super excited to try this. We got the paint mixed at the paint counter (which we originally forgot to do so had to go back…) in the putty color choice. Then I cleared everything off our counters and they are parked for the next couple days in our dining room–you can’t use your counters for three days so it can dry/harden properly.
Then taped everything off, which I would highly recommend.
And got to work! It is pretty strong smelling, like a lot more than regular paint. So open your windows and wear a mask if you decide to do this. And voila! Here are the after pictures!!!
(Excuse all the paint swatches on the walls…still working on making that decision..ha!) But isn’t that a million times better!? Of course, it’s no granite or quartz. But at least I don’t have to look at pink counters for the next 2 years while we save for those. It even covered the scratches in the pink. And it kinda toned down the backsplash–but I still want to get rid of it.
The blog post I mentioned earlier gave a follow up post about how they hold up and she said after 5 months they were still doing well! A couple knicks here and there, but there was plenty of leftover paint for touch ups down the road. I will keep you posted on how it holds up!
So step one of temporary kitchen fix is complete! Step two is to cover that blue backsplash with white beadboard and step three is to finally paint the walls. Which we hope to complete all 3 steps by the end of the month! What projects are you all working on lately??
I’ve been daydreaming about house projects lately (when am I not?), specifically in our bedroom. I woke up the other morning with all these ideas and quickly sketched them out and jotted them down. For fun I threw it together on a mood board!
If all this stuff is around/in style still when we redo our bedroom then I totally want to take it this direction! It’s small, so I wanted to keep it light but I’m not a big fan of pastel colors so I was stumped for a bit on what to do with wall treatment. But then I saw these images and I was inspired!
Here’s what I’m thinking for our room:
We have no timeline in mind for our bedroom…so I don’t know when we’d start on this. But I will update you as it happens! I always get so excited gathering my ideas and seeing them come to fruition!! 
Who else is working on bedroom projects? Or any projects around the house? I’d love to hear about them!
Not gonna lie, I am pretty impressed with my hubby for being able to do this. He always reveals to me how much I DON’T know about construction..but thanks to him I’m learning!!
Our basement was pretty chilly before as there was no air vent pumping heat into it. Calder recently got a pet snake (I know, some of you are weirded out and are no longer going to read my blog 
) and he has to keep it in the basement (in a corner away from plain view..ha). The snake can’t get too cold or it will die, hence the motivation to do this project!
(there was no hole here before!)
Moment of truth! Cutting our existing duct work..
Just past the cursing-underbreath-inducing step of fitting the new duct into the old duct..
new grate! looks profesh if I do say so myself!
Go hubster!
Now the basement is nice and toasty
House projects are coming along slower nowadays, but our living room has a welcome new addition. I bought curtains over a week ago and we finally got them hung on friday Part of that has to do with the hardware we chose to hang them.
The curtains are from IKEA and I love them. Light and airy with a touch of detailing that keeps them from being too boring. The stitched stripes add visual height, a touch of black to tie in with other elements in the room, and provides a handmade feel (although they are in no way handmade by me ).
These are the sheers that came with the house. They provide almost no privacy and are not exactly attractive either..(this picture was taken right before we hung the new ones, hence the random chairs and tools laying around)
And here are the new ones. It was impossible to get a good front-on picture during the day with my camera/novice photography skills. Hopefully these photos give you the gist!
We used pipe fittings from Home Depot as our curtain rod to go with the eclectic/rustic/indutrial/modern look we have going on in here
Still to come in this room is potentially a floor lamp in the corner by the curtains, a new pillow cover that I hope to use my new sewing machine for (!) and a wall clock project. And whatever else may come up!
Have a great week!
View of Gray’s & Torrey’s Peaks, Frisco, CO earlier today.
I hope your holidays and start to the year has been a good one! We had a great time seeing family and friends in Kansas and enjoying all the holiday festivities. The break was soo nice! But I am definitely ready for things to slow down a bit and get back in a regular routine.
It’s been almost a year since I started this blog before we went to Europe. Hard to believe! It’s been fun to share all the new experiences we had in 2012, but at times it has felt like an obligation and at times I was not fully present in real life moments because I was thinking about what to post on the blog! I don’t want it to be like that, at least not at this point in life, so I will continue to post every so often with house updates or a really great recipe or any fun adventures:) . But probably not so many times a week like I had been last year.
Today, I’m going to share a recipe for cookies I made before Christmas that were AMAZING! The original recipe is posted on one of my favorite food blogs, Crepes of Wrath (where they have much better photography than I do, so be sure to check it out!).
For the Chocolate Filling:
Instructions
