Oh Em Gee I’m posting

In case you thought I dropped off the face of the earth, I am here to remind you I didn’t. Just busy, busy, busy! I am happy to report that I have many a projects that I have accomplished since I have been away!! It was hard for me to decide which I was going to share first but I thought I should show you the bathroom since that has been on my to-do list forever…..remember this post. I pretty much talk about how much I hate the downstairs bathroom. Here is what it looked like 2 weeks ago.

Yikes!!!! I am so pleased to show you what it looks like now!

Sooo much better right!!! Here are some more pics

One thing I want to do is replace the light fixture and then I think I am done….key word. THINK!

See what I mean….just not right.

And finally my rug….which is where I got the color idea from. You can’t see it but the leaves have this minty green color in the center.

The paint color was a color match of Sherwin Williams Light Pistachio. I LOVE how much brighter the room feels and not so in ya face blue!!! I was originally going to do beadboard but decided to just put up some chair rail at 5′ high and paint it white below. Same effect and a lot less!! I will be replacing the light fixture soon so I will be back posting on that asap!

Also need to show you what is going on in my dining room…..some pretty exciting things!!

Happy Holidays!!!

I know you all are wondering where I have been and I apologize yet again!! But seriously trying to maintain 2 blogs has been a lot. Check out my other Blog with Belovely Events here. I think I realized that I may not have as much time to be updating this blog as much as I would like to but I will still be posting as I do some projects around the house. I want to keep everyone posted on my house progress!! So since I was last on here I have had some crazy weeks. Roux got spayed last Wednesday and had some issues with her recovery so I had her back and forth to the vet all last weekend and a few days during the week so that set me back on some holiday decorating and things.  By the way she is all better THANK GOD!! and back to her normal cute self.  I did finally managed to get a family picture after she was feeling better and I wanted to share it with you all and wish you a happy holiday!!!

This picture came out way better than I had anticipated because it was 8pm at night after a long work day and Roux vet visit. It only took us 2 tries with the automatic timer and luckily the camera made a beeping noise that got the dogs interest enough to stay still for a minute. I quickly uploaded the photo onto Costco’s website ( $15.99 for 50 cards and envelopes, Great deal!!) and was able to pick them up the next day and mail them out, not too shabby at all!!

Hope everyone has a wonderful Holiday filled with  family, friends, laughter and love!!

 

 

 

Whats New

Hey Everyone, you have probably been wondering where I have been for the past week and a half. Well I just have been busy and keeping up with 2 blogs (my other blog/company http://belovelyblog.wordpress.com/)  is a lot harder than I thought it would be, especially around all of the holidays. So I apologize but want you to know that I will update as much as I can!! So this post might seem lame compared to my stencil wall post but I got my christmas tree up the other night and I am so excited!! Last year Jeff and I bought our tree from Costco for $30 and well it was huge!! We decided to go for Costco again frankly because it is such a good deal and I love a good deal. The only problem is that the trees are all wrapped up at the store so you can’t really look at the shape exactly. We judged it on the height and how bushy it looked. Picked the smallest one and this is what we got!! It looks extra stumpy and fat here but it is really cute in person!

I also opted for white lights this year, Jeff always had white lights and I wanted to change things up, I must say it is really growing on me and might stick around for a while. Here is my favorite ornament.

You can probably guess that I got this in Maine. We decided to go to this adorable town called Boothbay Harbor while we visited last year and I decided to buy this cute ornament. I was pleasantly surprised when the owner of the shop said she could write our name on the boat (at the time we weren’t officially married and I was super excited to see my future name on the boat)  I just love how every ornament has a story and you think about the person who gave that ornament to you while you hang it or who was with you when you bought it. This weekend we are going to tackle the lights outside……

PS- Jeff fixed the fence yesterday and I am super excited! I will have to post a picture soon!

PPS- I have been ordering rugs like a maniac so that will also be a new post.

PPPS- We are going to an ugly christmas sweater party this weekend so even more pictures and posts about that!!

Gray Thanksgiving Weekend

That title may be misleading because I had a wonderful Thanksgiving break and it wasn’t gloomy at all. I was referring to my new living room color. I know this seriously came out of the blue but as I was sitting in my living room for the past few weeks after I stenciled my dining room wall , the color really, really bugged me. It just looked really bad up against that mauve/tan color that it was. So I had the day off on Friday after Thanksgiving and painted the room. I finished it so fast, I was quit impressed with myself and If I do say so myself my cutting in skills have improved A LOT!! What color did I decide on? Well since my hallway wall, dining wall, and living room wall pretty much are all in the same view of one another, I wanted them to flow nicely. The hallway is BM Stonington Gray and the stencil is the same color so I knew I wanted to keep it in the gray family. I also wanted to take a risk and go dark….I know it is so different for me but sometimes I can break my own rules and get crazy. So of course I got inspired by some Pinterest images of dark gray/blue walls. I kept coming back to the same one Shaker Gray by BM so I just went with it, no test on the walls, I just went all out and bought a gallon. And I love it! This usually never works out so well but the room is so bright because there are so many windows that the color looks awesome and ties in my new carpet tiles perfectly! Okay enough gabbing and more picture viewing.

Lets jog or memories for a few images. Here is what the living room looked like last week.

This is what it looked like when we first moved in

And the same corner of the room just more recent

Alright enough with that funky mauve color and now for some BM Shaker Gray!

I also rearranged the gallery wall above the tv. I love the new configuration, it also allows me to add to the collection.

A closer look…also don’t mind the empty frames and sideways photos. I need to put some new pictures in there.

A view of both the living room and dining room so you can see how much better the wall color flows.

Now I always have to point out things I want to change…I’m never satisfied lol. There honestly isn’t that much more I want to do in these 2 rooms but let me just make the list…..New light fixture= no more boob light. Change the dining room chairs and table, whether it be paint or purchase….up in the air.

And Roux was my little helper and by my helper I mean cry at me because she wanted me to just snuggle on the sofa with her.  This photo though shows how nicely the rug looks with the walls.

Overall I am very happy with the color and I think it will stay for a while

Pretty Leaves are Gone

I took these photos about a week and a half ago and already majority of these pretty leaves are gone. After Jeff and I raked for 2 hours yesterday I was really sad to see all of them go. So I decided to post these few pictures of the dogs in the yard and remember fall and to be thankful for all that I have like this yard, my dogs, the fence(even though it got wrecked in the snow storm) my house, my hubby, friends, family, and these beautiful tress and nature.

Roux is getting so big now, this also makes me sad She is all grown up but just like the seasons they come and go and Roux is no longer a puppy. I honestly don’t know how Mom’s see there children grow up so fast because I’m having a hard time with a puppy. Pathetic.

If she could be outside all day, she would. This is seriously her domain and she is the happiest when she is running around our yard. So happy we got the fence for this reason alone.

One of the spots where we lost a huge limb. I just loved the yellow and lime green in these trees. Did anyone else take some pretty photos of trees in the Fall? I wish I had taken some more before they all fell. There is always next year.

Carpet Tile Area Rugs

I am kinda cheap. I will admit it. Really it is not so much cheap as it is I like a good deal and will rarely pay full price for anything. So with that being said, you can understand why I couldn’t let this opportunity pass me. What opportunity? Well as most of you know I am an Interior Designer and I currently design hotels, so I work with mostly commercial materials. Sometimes I can get a few good deals on residential furniture, accessories, etc but mostly the products I work with can’t cross over into residential…bummer. But I have a connection with a sales rep for Interface Flor tiles who is also linked with Flor (the residential line). I LOVE these carpet tiles and once she notified me of ordering in a bunch of samples and making them into area rugs, I got all giddy inside!! How could I not take FULL advantage of this opportunity? It was FREE and the product is AMAZING!!! All she had to do was send me their Tactile (which is a sticky little sticker… if you will… that holds the carpets together in the corners, not damaging your floors in any way)  I immediately went onto their website and ordered in some tiles to decide. I went with this guy! It was the perfect color way and a pretty texture. Then I just went crazy and added some to my kitchen and back door area! I’m all carpet tiled out! Literally can’t put them anywhere else except my dining room but I think it would be too much…I already considered it.  Alright here is what it looks like, I couldn’t be happier and not to mention it is commercial quality and stain resistant which is perfect for my house and the doggies (who destroyed 2 rugs before this) If the dogs destroy this one it won’t be so bad because well it was free. Did I mention this was Free yet!! Okay I am done being annoying now! Enjoy!

I decided to quarter turn the tiles to make it a little more interesting.

I’m kinda obsessed with it!

Now for me to change-up that wall color to make this room soo much better…..Another day, another project!

Now into the kitchen

And the back door….

That is all! Hope everyone has a great weekend!!!

 

Stencil Time Finished

This post is coming to you early because I will be gone for majority of the day tomorrow for work and I couldn’t wait to show you what I did this weekend. Yesterday and today I was able to complete my stencil project that I have been putting off for a while now. To be honest it was one of the first projects that went perfect from start to finish. There were no bumps along the way and doing the stencil was actually easy….I was really scared at first but the more I did it, it became like second nature. So I showed you in my last post where I got the stencil design from.  I printed it from this site here and then cut it out.

I used a piece of cardboard I had lying around the house. So far this project has cost me nothing. After your trace  the design you simply cut it out and start tracing on your wall.
This was the part I was nervous about, especially because you are just supposed to eyeball when you are tracing. I started in the middle of the wall and went from there. I was doing about 1″ spacing in the design and that left me with this. It wasn’t perfect and I was a little nervous it wasn’t going to turn out right but I kept going with it.

It took me about 3 hours to trace this wall, not bad at all. The tracing was actually the hardest part. So by 4 on Saturday I had it all traced and decided to start painting for an hour or two. I couldn’t help myself, I was too excited to see how it was going to turn out.I used Benjamin Moore Stonington Gray like my hallway walls.  I bought a set of paint brushes from Michael’s because I wasn’t sure what size brush was going to work and I didn’t want to have to keep going back out to get the perfect size. The brushes were $7 and I ended up with the perfect brush size that pretty much perfected my spacing issues. If there was ever an area that wasn’t traced perfectly this brush pretty much fixed the issue. On Saturday night the progress looked like this. Oh and with the paint and brushes this project cost me $20. A hell of a lot cheaper than buying the stencil alone for $50. Plus now I have more Stonington Gray to do other projects with, it is probably one of my favorite colors.

I already was obsessed with it and couldn’t wait to finish on Sunday morning. When I woke up the first thing I did was get to work. I finished around 12:15pm and I couldn’t be happier with the results! I actually contemplated doing the rest of the walls in my dining room…..but I didn’t. Alright enough blabbing and now for the finished product!

I LOVE the transition now, makes me feel so much better!

Oh yeah and finally a good picture of the light fixture. Now what to do about that table and chairs….Don’t worry I have some ideas in mind!

Okay so this is what my wall looked like before.

And after, I couldn’t be more in LOVE with the way it turned out! I also would recommend anyone who was thinking about trying it, to just do it! I promise it is not that hard.