In the 9 years we've lived here there's one room that has never been painted and it was our basement bathroom, which our oldest now shares. The latter bit of information threw a wrench into my plans, because don't you know that he has an opinion on what he'd like the bathroom to look like?!

I mean he is my son, so it stands to reason that he'd have an opinion, and in my mad dash to get projects done before surgery his bathroom was on the list.

I've known for a while that I wanted to do this buffalo plaid paint treatment that I saw on BH&G {HERE}. They did theirs in a calm set of colors, but I had no such plans. A few years back, Big Guy and I agreed on a rug and this rug was not allowed to be removed in the update. Big Guy really likes this rug, or maybe, and more likely, he hates change. So inside this rug was a lovely dark red, and that was going to be the color for my plaid wall treatment. The rug also included several greens, which would be the Big Guy's fave color.

So I started on this project by taping 6" stripes all around the walls. This took far more time than I figured it would, but I knew it was going to be great. I marked each stripe that I was going to paint with a small "x" inside it. Otherwise, I would be getting confused with all of the lines going on.
Then it was time for paint. I didn't follow the directions that BH&G had. My glaze to paint ratio was 2:1. I bought a pint of glaze and then got a sample size of my paint color, and it only cost me $15. I was very excited about this economical paint treatment. It'd probably cost a lot more if I was doing a larger room, but this itty bitty bathroom did not have a lot of wall space. There is a bit of a technique when working with glazed paint, but I didn't take me long to get it. Using a roller probably would have been the better choice, but I'd already committed to my brush so that's what I continued to use.
You can see where I drew the very faint vertical 6" stripes over my horizontal stripes. I let the horizontal stripes dry overnight before embarking on the vertical stripes, but I have to say I was really worried about my decision at this point. I hated the stripes. Big Guy really liked them. It was too late to back down now, the vertical stripes needed to go on so I could get a good picture of just what I'd done.
After I got the vertical stripes done, and pulled the tape off I was in love! Big Guy liked it, but he kept calling it a tablecloth. Hubs was not as sure, but I was really happy, and I even managed to match up some of my stripes with the grout lines in the tile. I'm just that good (I'm not... it was a coincidence). I could not wait to get the bathroom accessorized!

Unfortunately, accessories would be where the child and I disagreed. I wanted the bathroom organized, but the boy likes things the way he likes things. He's also picky and opinionated. There may have been more than one argument about how to organize his counter clutter. Not that what he had on the counter wasn't needed, it absolutely was, but it doesn't need to be spread out all over the entire counter. Luckily a trip to Walmart saved the day. Sorry Target, you know I love you, but you didn't have anything that he liked.
The macrame glass containers were just the thing to solve our argument. The glass soapdish was something that we had upstairs in our bathroom, but I was more than willing to donate it to hold all of his various things for his braces and their care. I'm still looking for a towel holder for the hand towel, and none of the artwork is back up, but I figure those are things that I can do as I get stronger. Gives me a goal. We also got a new shower curtain that had all of our colors, and new towels.
I'm happy that my boy likes his bathroom, and I'm extra happy that I won't be embarrassed over the basement bathroom anymore.

Thanks so much for stopping by!

When we bought the house 9 years ago, the first thing we did after closing was to paint the family room a lovely pumpkin orange. It was my favorite room in the house for a very long time, but then I started getting more adventurous in my paint colors. Painting our master bedroom navy blue was bold and scary for us, but I love how that turned out. So then we started talking about what color to paint the family room. It needed to be refreshed, and I wanted something dramatic. I found this color scheme from Sherwin Williams called Global Spice and it has all the colors I love in it. So it has formed the basis for the new color scheme on the main level of the house.

We started thinking about the colors that we liked, and we settled on a dark purple. We had several shades, but in the end, Sweet Currant by Valspar won the color race. So the next weekend, we started cleaning and clearing out the family room.

It was probably the best cleaning the room had received in the last 5 years. Everyone chipped in. I vacuumed the walls and removed all the cobwebs. The littles scrubbed all the window sills and baseboards. The Big Guy was our gopher and ended up cleaning the trim work that the littles couldn't reach. After all of that, it was finally time to paint, and it was amazing! While the new color is dark and dramatic, it's not overpowering. Not with all of the white trim and curtains. Luckily, the new fabric I bought for the pillows has all those same colors and they really pop off the gray of the couch. The dark purple also allows our artwork to pop.
Speaking of which, we needed some new artwork. I love the lily picture above our fireplace, but it wasn't right for the family room anymore. So I moved it up to our bedroom, where it fills the space above my dresser much better than the art I had up there. Michael's then had a sale for 70% off their canvases so the hubs and I picked up a 36" square canvas for $21. Then $3 worth of paint from Walmart and we were going to have some new abstract art.
The kids and I laid the canvas on the driveway and started throwing paint on it. I tried scraping the paint in straight lines off the canvas, but it muddled the paint too much. So we squirted more paint onto the canvas and then made sweeping arcs with the squeegee and we liked that much better. We just continued to add paint and make sweeping arcs until it looked done.
The art project was so much! I love that it was a group project. I also love how the whole room came together and how well it works with the rest of the main level of the house. Even the messy kitchen table looks right at home.
 All of the new pillows look fabulous on the couch. I may or may not being a bit precious with the striped pillows, because that fabric is a really nice upholstery chenille that can't be washed, dry cleaned only. I love how the gray allows everything to pop.
I figured I'd leave the comparison to how the room used to look to what it looks like now until the very end. I really did love the orange, but the purple is just so much more dramatic and a little more grown-up.

Just one room left for the main level to be done. The dining room! Thanks for stopping by!

So my girl is turning 5 this year, and as we've done with both of her brothers, 5 is the year they get their "Big" bedroom. Baby Girl is no different. We've been working on her room, and converting it to her Big Girl room for a few weeks now, but she also wanted to do her bathroom, so I gave her carte blanche with her bathroom.

She told me she wanted a mermaid bathroom, so we hopped on Pinterest and start looking at various renditions of mermaid bathrooms. Most of them are blue or green, but my girl wants a pink/purple bathroom. Of course, she does. You know fate is on your side when you're at Lowe's and the mistints are on sale, AND you find the perfect shade of pink for your girl's bathroom. $5 for an entire gallon of paint. That's a steal!

So we had the paint, and we'd just painted the family room, so all the paint supplies were still out and what better time to paint than when everything is out and about?

The hubs helped me take everything down in the bathroom, and then it was time to slap some paint on the walls. Painting it went pretty easily, you know on a bum knee and everything. The hubs wasn't overly happy that I was doing so much, but I am nothing if not foolish and full of blind determination.


Once the paint dried, Baby Girl and I started putting her bathroom back together, but there was something missing. The linen closet creates an almost perfect accent wall in the bathroom, and another quick Pinterest search solves my dilemma.


After buying a quart of the perfect purple, Plum Dandy for those of you wondering, I mixed it with some glaze that I had. It ended up being a 1:1 ratio paint to glaze, and then I rolled it onto the wall. I did one side and then drug my small corn husk broom through it. Vertically then horizontally. I then did the same thing on the adjacent wall. It's not perfect, but I love it and for my first attempt I'm really happy with the whole effect.


Baby Girl decided that she wanted to change up her toothbrush holder. We'd seen on Pinterest some glittered mason jars, and she wanted to do that for her mason jars. So that's what we did. The hubs is not a fan of the glitter, but this was important to the girl.

So then it was just finishing touches, and now my Baby Girl has her big girl mermaid bathroom.


 We found this starfish dish while at Home Goods, and it was on clearance for $3! Baby Girl gingerly carried it around the entire store. She loved that she could pick something out for her bathroom. We added the bag of baubles which I got from Pottery Barn years ago.

We used the old towel rack and turned it into a fun lantern wall. I still need to add fairy lights to it, but I figure when she's older and wants to take a nice relaxing soak, the fairy lights will add a nice ambiance. I kind of want a lantern wall in my bathroom, if I'm being honest.


I'm really happy that she's happy, and that another project is off the list. I'm also happy to report that she's taking care of her new bathroom the way a big girl should take care of her bathroom. I mean there are still towels on the floor, but the days of painting the cabinets in toothpaste seem to be behind us. She takes a lot of care to make sure things are put away, at least on the counter.

Have you ever had a project that seemed simple and straightforward, and then it turned into this teeming monster that wants to thwart you at every turn?

Days before Christmas seems like the best time to undertake a small construction project, doesn't it?

I thought so too! Nevermind that I had 19 people coming to dinner on Christmas Eve. What's a little sawdust, drywall dust, and paint?

This new drop zone had actually been in the plans since Thanksgiving, but I kept getting told that I needed to wait, because there was a couch to get rid of before I could implement my plan. Once that couch was gone though! It took a day or 2 to get the furniture moved and the space for the new drop zone cleared out.

I'm getting ahead of myself, let me tell you how this evolved. I bought an entire set of furniture for the family room after Thanksgiving, which meant that all the furniture that was currently in the family room would need to move downstairs to the basement, which further meant that I needed to get rid of 2 pieces of furniture. Luckily, my dad took the big red couch. The chair still needs to go to the dump. The kids have destroyed it.

So with all of that changing, I started looking at another spot in the house that wasn't working anymore. That spot was the itty bitty coat rack that held their coats and backpacks (sometimes), but more often than not, the chair in the living room would hold the oldest's backpack, the shoes would get thrown somewhere near the sofa table, and the two littles......well their crap just got strewn from the living room towards the kitchen. It drove the hubs and me crazy. So I started coming up with plans for a new and improved drop zone. The original plan was to build lockers over on the wall against the stairs in the living room, but that required work. Not that I'm afraid of work, but it would've had to wait until after the new year, and as my husband so eloquently called my unwavering impatience, it just wasn't gonna happen.

So I started really looking at spots and things we had on hand, and then an idea grew. What if I transformed my little office space into the new drop zone?


My area could move into the living room and we'd just use it as more of a parlor. At least then the room would be seeing regular use!

So now I have the perfect space for the drop zone, but how to implement it? I could still do lockers, but again that meant waiting. No, go. Then I remembered that I built a bench eons ago, and it was going to be homeless when the new furniture came in. Why not use it? It was a custom built bench to go over the laundry baskets we used as toy bins when the boys were small. It'd certainly work for a bench to put on shoes and house shoe baskets.

So I moved it and the memo board over to the new spot. Small Fry approves of this!  He and Baby Girl immediately jumped on the shoe basket idea, and it's been so great not tripping over their shoes. Big Guy took a little longer to come around, actually, we still have to remind him to put his shoes away.

I am loving this change so far, and it's not even done!

Next, I had to make sure I had the lumber. We've got loads of scraps in the garage from various projects, so I was fairly certain that I could find everything I needed, and I was right. I managed to scrounge together all the wood I would need for the wall. I even found the builder's paint!

I called my dad and asked him if he wanted to take a break from painting his basement to help me build some wainscotting for the area. I also told him I'd pay him by providing lunch and coffee. He's cheap, but good labor.

I drew up some cursory pictures, and texted them over to him, explaining what exactly I wanted. We went back and forth a bit over what he would bring over and what I had. In the end, the plans were set! He would come over the next day and build me the wall I wanted. Squeeeee!

Construction went exactly as you figured it would. It was a straightforward plan with nothing to really complicate it, except or the dang outlet. Oh well. The outlet is behind the bench so ending the wood a bit above it worked out well.


The only real hitch came when I was touch up the wall where the hallway color is. My sample can was a different shade completely! So I went back to Lowe's and discovered that they'd changed the name of the paint I had used (it's now called Wild Mushroom), but if I had the code then they could mix it up. Of course, I don't remember the code, that's why I remembered the name! Google search to the rescue! The paint is still a shade darker, but to be fair this paint has been on the wall for ~5 years, so some lightening is to be expected. I will be repainting parts of the hallway at some point so that you can't see all my touch-ups. Home improvement projects never go exactly to plan, do they?


You can see the terrible touch-ups in the picture, but look how nice the whole area looks! I love that the kids are using it and that the only shoes I've tripped over lately, are the hubs. I mean I don't love that, but it's so much better than dodging several pairs on my trek from the front door to the kitchen.


So there's the new drop zone, and I gotta say I love it a little more that it didn't cost me a penny, not including the $13 for the new paint for the walls. I love how simple and easy it came together and how much nicer it is now to walk in our front door and not see piles of kid crap everywhere. Who knew that such a simple change would bring so much peace?

Thank so much stopping by!

Cheers,

Can you believe that Independence Day is next week?!?! What?!?!

Where the heck has the year gone?

Luckily, I was on the ball this year, and made our patriotic shirts early enough to actually wear on the 4th. Go me!

I did some searching on the googles, and found some patriotic phrases I liked for the fam and then set about drawing out the images for the shirts.

I created rough drafts and then final drafts on paper, and then used them as guides for the shirts. I lettered the shirts with a combination of sharpies and fabric paint. Each person got a personalized shirt to fit their interests or personalities.

I must say I'm pretty proud of each of these creations, although the hubs shirt was a pain. Apparently his shirt was cut much smaller than the advertised size, and so needed a bit more customization, but I wasn't about to redo my artwork, so I cut out around my original artwork, staying about 1/4" away from the painted edge, and then stitched it down to a shirt that was in fact the same size as was advertised. So his shirt officially takes the cake as the most involved shirt.

My shirt was a close second, because I wanted to create a watercolor affect for the flag, and that took a bit of planning and prayer, but luckily it turned out well on the first try, from there it was just a matter of lettering everything with my trusty black sharpie.


The kids shirts were all fairly straightforward, the only one that had a bit more done to it was Baby Girl's because I sewed some star rhinestones to it to add a bit more sparkle. A girl can never have too much sparkle.

Thank so much for stopping by!