Try and try again

We have had a cork board hanging next to our  front door for quite a while now but it was supposed to just be a temporary thing until we found some artwork that we liked to replace it with.  But having a message board by the door has come in handy so I decided to spruce it up a bit.

Here it is in it's initial state.  I had painted the trim blue a few years ago but the dark brown chunky cork just wasn't helping it out any in the style department.

So I thought it might be fun to cover the cork in some blue scrapbooking paper and paint the frame a light green color to match the other decor in the living room.

Once again I prepared for painting by first taping off the edges and then painting on a coat of primer:

Then I applied a couple layers of the green paint and attached the scrapbooking paper with some double-sided tape:

I liked the color combination but when I put it up on the wall it just faded into the background, it didn't add the pop of color I was hoping for :o(

 

So after being a little grumpy I got back to work and tried again.  This time I used left-over paint from the blue dresser in the living room and fabric remnants from covering the lampshade for the bedroom mentioned a few posts ago.   I also added a few hooks along the bottom of the frame that I had picked up the other day.  For the hooks I pre-drilled guide holes making the screwing in of the hooks a lot easier.

Then I cut the fabric to size and pinned it to the corners of the cork board and here you go, our new message board.  I am MUCH happier with the results this time around :o)  And we have hooks to hang our keys so no more fishing through my purse every morning.

Now this message board will be a permanent and appreciated addition to the space..........no more "place holder" designation for this cork board!

Making it work with a little ingenuity

While I was finishing up the bathroom this last weekend (straightening towels, etc. before taking pictures) I remembered Brian and I had worked some magic on one of the towel bars.  I found the two towel bars and a matching toilet paper holder all at Home Goods for a reasonably good price.  The only problem was the towel bars only came in one size 24".  That would work for holding one folded towel but what do we do about two?!

So I thought maybe we could buy an aluminum pipe in the same thickness as the towel bar and cut it to the length we wanted to nicely line-up with the window and fit two towels.  Brian got to work measuring and cutting the pipe to the right length and I sprayed it with some left over paint we had in a satin nickel.

Here you can see that it looks like it belongs, if you look really close you might be able to tell a difference, but who ever looks that close.......

........And the towels hide it anyway!

So there you have it.  To make a good deal work for you, sometimes you may have to do a little tweaking :o)

Another rainy day

I just thought this view of Bailey in the window watching the rain was cute so I had to get a picture.  Did I ever mention that Bay has a curly, little pig-tail?  When I adopted him from the SPCA his name was "Hook".  Poor Bay, good thing I saved him :o)

The bathroom is complete ........... atleast for the time being

Today I finished decorating the bathroom.  We still have some caulking to finish and someday replacing the sink but for the present we are done with the bathroom.  The bathroom has really become my favorite room.  I just love the choices we made, from paint color to tile styles.  We pretty much did a full remodel on the bathroom.  We pulled out the shower surround and put in a new deeper tub, tiled to the ceiling in the shower, and also tiled the floor.

Here's a picture of our new tub, faucet hardware, soap holder, and tile.  The tile we chose is a basic tan ceramic 6"x6" tile from Home Depot.  Since we were putting in the tile ourselves we thought we should do something fun so we added a travertine and green-tinted glass accent strip through the middle of the wall.  We bought the accent in mesh-backed sheets of 12"x12" from Lowe's and decided to cut them down to 4" thick to run the entire length of shower enclosure.

Here is a closer picture of the accent tile:

 

Here's another view of the shower showing our water-saving rain flow shower head.  I'm really glad we decided on the rain flow option, it still gives decent water pressure but it's a bit gentler.  It's so relaxing I end up not wanting to get out of the shower.  I guess that kinda cancels out the whole water saving feature :o) 

The color scheme for the bathroom arose from our shower curtain.  I fell in love with it looking through the Crate and Barrel catalog and had to buy it, even before we were completely moved in to the house.  I just loved the colors and their soothing nature and the leaf pattern.  We incorporated the light tan color with the tile and the light green with the paint color on the walls and also the glass tiles of the accent strip in the shower.

 

We also tiled the floor of the bathroom.  When we moved in the flooring was just a plain white "tile-looking" linoleum.  Brian decided to surprise me while I was out of town by starting the floor tile but ran into a snag when he found we hadn't bought enough of the hexagonal tile from Home Depot and they no longer carried it.  I'll leave the details for him to tell in a post when he talks about how to actually do the tile work.  But we finally finished and the floor looks great.  The hexagonal shape is reminescent of tile used during the early 1900's when our house was built but has a more modern feel due to the color and non-glossy appearance.  

Here you can see the tile a little closer up:

You can also see from this picture a couple rows of tile near the baseboard are a slightly different color.........that's how we ended up dealing with the tile shortage.  We had to contact the manufacturer and ordered a slightly different color tile.  It has more shades of grey and tan than the original tile we had.  We have the greyish tile running the perimeter of the room, an even thickness all the way around.  Another bit of "fun" or "character" we added to the room :o)

So after we had the major things out of the way I got to work on the little touches.  I had a cute little bird that I had bought several years back that I thought would work well with the whole leaf motif of the shower curtain.

For some reason this bird and the "French Clay" green of the walls made me think "French Garden" for the decoration theme.  And today I found this cute little ceramic bird at Michael's:

So the bird's crown incorporates aristocracy and that makes you think French too, right? :o)

I also bought some prints of bird eggs and flowers a couple of weeks back that I finally found frames for at Target and was able to hang them up.

Here's a grouping on the wall next to the sink:

And a bit closer:

And I also put a couple of small frames over the toilet, though this was a bit difficult to place because our toilet is not centered in this little cubby :o(  And I might try to use larger frames to fill the space a bit more.

So here's another, fuller view of the bathroom:

We do have an old desk in the bathroom that we found at a yard sale that we use to set clothes or towels on instead of the floor.......and it also doubles as a cat box hider!  We attached some curtains to help contain the cat litter so we didn't have to worry about stepping on it with wet feet when we get out of the shower......YUCK!  (You can read more about it here).

Here you can see a little more of it:

So there you have it, our finished for now bathroom.........until we tackle a new sink :o)

Spring is here and we are far, far behind!

We have been watching as the yard is coming back to life.  Last year at this time our yard was pretty much non-existent.  We had yet to move the fence back to enclose all our property, plant the grass, and get our garden started.  So compared to last year, we are way ahead of the game.  But we still have quite a bit of work to do.

We are excited that this year we will be able to reap the benefits of our garden.  Last year we were working to establish our fruit trees and berries so we removed most the flowers to encourage vegetative growth :o(  So now that the plants are a bit stronger we get to eat fruit from OUR OWN GARDEN!!!

And here is our peach tree with blossoms! 

And here is a picture of our apricot tree, already past the blossom stage and starting to leaf out.

A cool thing about the fruit trees we planted are that they were grafted on a dwarf rootstocks so we won't be overwhelmed with pruning and too much fruit (though I doubt this last part!) AND there are three different varieties on each tree that produce at different times so we will have an extended peach and apricot enjoyment season.........Yippee!
Now we just have to sit back and wait.

And did I mention our berries?!  We are hoping to have a crop of raspberries, two varieties of red and a golden variety, blackberries, boysenberries, two different varieties of blueberries and last but not least strawberries.  We had a short season of strawberries last year as we were a little late at getting them in the ground.  The strawberries we did have were wonderful, super sweet, a bit on the small size but they packed a flavorful punch.  And we did get to enjoy some red raspberries last year too.

Here's a picture of our golden raspberry sending up new shoots.  We have to keep this guy under control because I've heard raspberries can get a bit out of hand.  We dug out our beds and buried the sideboards about a foot into the ground to try to contain the vines to the planters.   We will see how that works.  I've already had to pull out a few escapees from the red raspberries that broke free over the planter box wall.

So the state of a garden (and whole yard) is a bit of a weed patch.  As it's been raining a lot lately and we have been traveling almost every weekend we haven't had any time to work in the yard.........and it shows!

I am embarrassed to show the state of our yard but here it is :o(  I'm leaving out the pictures of the flower beds where the weeds are a couple feet tall!

 

Atleast it's green, right?

The last two days have been nice and sunny so after work I pulled some weeds and mowed down some to get the garden looking a bit better..........and so I can start planning what to plant in our other beds :o)

(That big funky looking plant in the far bed is an artichoke, it didn't produce last year but maybe this year.........let's keep our fingers crossed.)

Overall we are at a much better starting point than last year so I'm excited to get out and working in the yard again.  So hopefully we get a few more sunny days!

Adding a little pizzaz.........to a lampshade

I decided to cover our bedroom nightstand lampshade with some fabric to tie in to the color-scheme and liven things up a bit.  

I had covered a lampshade in our bedroom before with some fabric that just wasn't working with the new blue painted walls.  The work was a bit tedious for me so I hadn't gotten around to doing a new lampshade in a different fabric.  For the first lampshade I had cut out some fabric using the plastic protective sleeve that the lampshade is sold in as a template.  Then I sewed the two edges together so it was cylindrical and pulled it down and around the lampshade like putting on a shirt.  I had left an inch extra on the bottom and the top that I glued to the inside of the shade to make the edges look finished.  I know, I know, it doesn't sound that bad but my sewing skills leave something to be desired, even for just sewing a straight seam :o(

But low and behold guess what I found at the fabric store!  A lampshade lined with adhesive so all you have to do is stick on your fabric of choice.  I was excited!  And it was on sale for 50% off, woohoo! 

So here it is.  The green paper is just the liner, like the backing to a sticker that is peeled off to reveal the sticky layer.

Here is a close-up of the simple instructions included on the shade:

First I removed the paper lining from the adhesive of the lamp shade.  The lining is then used as the pattern to draw the dimensions out on the fabric to be used, with 1 inch extra on all sides for the edges.

Here is a picture of the pattern laid out on the wrong side of the fabric so trace lines won't be visible on the finished shade.  Well I guess that doesn't matter too much since the trace lines will be glued to the inside of the shade.........oh well, this is how I did it anyway.

After cutting the fabric I carefully attached the fabric to the shade, smoothing out any creases in the fabric as I went along.  I then glued the 1 inch overhang of fabric at the top and bottom to the inside of the shade with a hot glue gun.  If you wanted to, you can also add some fringe or pretty beads along the bottom edge of the shade to give it something a little more flashy.........but alas I don't think that would go over very well with Brian since this lamp is on his side of the bed :o(

But here it is all finished!

I know not terribly exciting, but a lot better than the orange shade I previously had...........yeah, the orange never really worked but I was experimenting, nothing wrong with experimenting :o)  I also plan on painting Brian's nightstand white to lighten things up a bit more and maybe getting a new picture frame.  One project down a zillion more to go! :o)

Seashells by the Sea Shore

Well, we don't exactly live by the sea shore but it's only a couple hours drive away.  Growing up I loved going to the beach with my family and searching for seashells.  I never found anything really exotic, the most exciting find would be a completely intact sand dollar, but the hunt was the fun part :o)

This last week I bought some prints online of birds and flowers for the bathroom for a "French Garden" theme.  The theme came to me because the color of the walls reminded me of the pale green french clay that is used for facials.........I don't know why, I doubt Brian made the same connection :o)  Anyway, when I bought the garden themed prints it was a get 4 groups of prints for the price of 3 so I decided to also get a pack of seashell prints.  The seashells would work perfectly with a really cool red coral embroidered accent pillow that I found a while back for the front bedroom.

So I used some frames I already had and hung them up on the wall.  Here is a picture of two of the prints flanking the bed.

 

 Here you can see the prints up close.

Some pretty red, scallop shells:

 

And pretty blueish-green and speckled shells.

I also had a couple small prints that I hung together over a chair by the door.

So there's our sea-themed front bedroom.  It's a work in progress but is slowly coming along :o) 

I'm still trying to find some white frames for the prints for the bathroom that aren't too expensive.  Once I get them up I'll be sure to post the pictures!