Christmas House Tour: Girls' Room

I've always wanted to do trees in the kids' rooms, but the frugal gal in me always put it off, thinking of using that money for something I could use year round instead.  Hosting the Relief Society Kringle Mingle this year finally gave me the excuse I needed.   

I am still in the process of redecorating Leah's room, but the main colors are Gray and Coral.   I sewed all the bedding, and don't underestimate those snowflakes.  There are around 30 of those suckers, and I'm not kidding when I say it took me over 6 hours (during General Conference) to put those things together, not to mention sore hands from cutting out the shapes  (Maybe I should work out?:-)).

I also stuffed some Christmas socks with batting and hung them up on the window frame, reminds me of the Who's in Whoville.  Should have found some coral and white striped socks but I was in a bit of a rush to get it done, so these ones worked for now.

Excuse the weird camera angle, (trying to show off more snowflakes without climbing on the dresser again:-))  I spray painted some old frames I had, and made the art myself in photoshop, from ideas found on Pinterest.

Missing the coral theme, but I found these great damask napkins at TJMaxx, and decided to make them into a Merry Christmas Banner.  I just printed off the letters on cardstock and taped them to the napkins.  Then taped the napkins to a long piece of yarn, and tied some tulle between each one.

Also tied tulle on the light strand in between each light.  I made the flower ball a while back, and the yarn ball is just that, leftover yarn, on top of my candlestick.

 Bunny slippers- cause that's how I roll:-)

And then there's the little nativity scene my daughter found and put out for me.  That dresser will be getting a new color come summer time... can't wait for that!

Christmas House Tour: Guest Room

Today's Christmas Room is my modern eclectic guest/craft room.

I spray painted some branches with white paint (but only to make them light gray,) and hung my pink and blue ornaments on, and placed spools of thread on the big thorns. This is my craft room after all:-)

Then I hung Christmas ornaments with ribbon from the window moldings (yes, someday those blinds will be made into Roman shades like my dining room), and topped it with a feather boa I got at House of Bachelorette-- (best prices on boas-- not paid to say this:-)

Luckily, I have this marabou feather wreath up year round anyway, so that looked festive enough all by itself.  And that lovely one of a kind painting- by Yours Truly at my first Paint Jam session while I was in Hong Kong this summer.  The secretary I got for free and it was in a bad 80s kind of way, and I painted it black a few years ago and added new hardware, I still love it. Great for fabric/craft storage.

And since I haven't found the perfect neo-classical mirror for over the bed yet, I decided to make some paper fan flowers, then cut out some ornament shapes for the center from sticky glittery foam paper, and then cut out the snowflake shapes and stuck them to the wall.

In October the ladies in my Relief Society (church women's organization)  asked me if I would be one of the hostesses for our  Christmas Activity, the Kringle Mingle.  I was so excited to have a Home Tour and really decorate my house up for Christmas.  I'll be adding more rooms each day so you can continue on the tour!

You can also see the post on my daughters' Christmas room here.

Thanks for stopping by!

Girls Room Sneak Peek

I've been busy redecorating my daughters room.  Here's the new bedding.  More pics to come.

Here's what it looked  like BEFORE:

After Sneak Peek:

I made all the bedding.  The duvet and pillow sham I made from fabric from spoonflower.com  The white coral pillows were made from Fabric.com   The furry pillow was originally a square pillow from Target, which I altered into a lumbar pillow.   The wall color is SW Shoji White. I am so tickled with how it turned out.  

Laundry Directions for Children and Girls Room

In order to lighten my load (har har), I typed up these laundry directions, so that way my 8 year old can pitch in with the laundry.  She'll be able to look at this and know what settings to set the washer to when I ask her to throw in a load of clothes or take the wet ones from the washer.  I'm going to print this out and stick it on the side of the washer.  I left blanks so if you want to print it, you can fill in the names of your settings for your washer/dryer.  I am smiling already and wondering why I haven't done this sooner:-)

More decorating projects coming up soon as my kids go back to school and just my 2 year old will be home.  My daughters room made the move from our home in Utah to were we are now. When she was 4 and now she's 8, and it's due is getting a makeover next!

Here's the BEFORE's  where we just moved her room to our new house:

and another BEFORE of the room here in our current house.

and for now the "After" is in my head.:-)  I must say my style has definitely changed for the better, can't wait to tear this room apart!  Goodbye Green and Yellow!  Fabric and paint have been selected!

H's Laundry Room Board

I got to have some fun putting together a design for my friend Haley's laundry room.   Though I'm usually busy being a full-time SAHM,  putting my Interior Design degree to use is my absolute favorite thing! The starting point was the red washer and dryer she had previously purchased. After assessing her style, I designed a room with a modern country feel.

This is the pattern I suggested for the hand painted wall treatment:

I also included more detailed elevations of each wall that I delivered along with the color board.   I had so much fun working on this project-- Thanks Haley!

Check Off the Bathroom Mirror Project!

Lucky for me this week my mom was in town and so I was able to get some projects done!

Mirror Before:

 Step 1: Cut frame yourself:-)

 Step 2: Pick out a color and paint it before your husbee gets home and has an opinion.

You will see the top edges of the moulding in the mirror reflection of the inside of your frame, so you have to paint an inch or two of the backside.

Step 3:  Install it using 3m sticky velcro thingys right to the mirror.

Step 4:  Sit back and enjoy how you took that boring builder mirror to a bright sunshiny day!

I took my towel to the paint store and found a sample to match.  (The color isn't showing up just right on the monitor, but in real life I assure you is the same as the towel.) If I remember correctly, I think the moulding was around $60 for this project, but you could definitely use smaller molding or make your own for less $.

Here's the another view of the room.

So I made a Quilt

Creative title huh?:-)  This is only the 3rd quilt I've made.  Inspired by my friend Emily, we each made a snowball pattern.  I wish I would have kept track of how many hours this took.  Let's just say it was a crazy amount.  My SIL is due with a baby girl any day now--  so this is for her.

Front:

Back:

Even though the front took more work, I almost like the back better cause I love the fabric.  I can't believe JoAnns was discontinuing it.  Luckily,  I was able to bind it while listening to 8 hours of General Conference over the weekend.  Now I can check that project off the list!

Drab to Fab My DIY Kitchen Makeover

I keep bumping into my kitchen island, which sometimes feels like an obstacle course to get around.  I am reminded of my old kitchen that I loved, which wasn't huge, but well space planned.  It had a great big peninsula, and makes me wish I could remodel my entire kitchen.   (I love islands, but it is annoying to me in my particular floor plan.) I decided to revisit my old house's kitchen makeover and reminisce about making cookies on the 4' wide peninsula.

BEFORE:

   This before photo was taken before we bought the house.  I LOVED the peninsula and am sad at my new house I have to keep my black bar stools in the basement... maybe they can come out someday... Anyhoo, here's the "before" and "after" kitchen pics of our house in Utah.

AFTER:

This kitchen desperately needed help, and we did it on a pretty small budget. The cabinets were OK,  and new ones weren't in the budget, the old laminate counter top had lots of bubbles and cracks in it.   I kept things pretty neutral since I knew we wouldn't be staying too long and wanted to make it buyer friendly.  Enter granite tile, travertine trim for the edges, and tumbled travertine for the back splash, and a  new light fixture for the dining area.  After a lot of hard work, washing dishes in the bathroom, and eating a lot of take out, it was finally done.

We also got new hardware for the cabinets, a new faucet and stainless appliances to match the dishwasher, new light fixtures in the kitchen and dining. Hopefully the next owner is appreciating our hard work:-)

We got a new gas stove and refrigerator at the scratch'n'dent store, (you can't even tell) to match our stainless dishwasher.  The appliances stayed when we moved, especially after we completely squeezed the fridge in there, there's no way it was coming out- I miss you stainless appliances-- and penny the peninsula!!!

Bathroom Before & After

 I want to share some small and simple changes that can easily affect the feeling of your powder room.

 Boring Bathroom Before:

After:

Tip #1:  Raise the Rod!  Raising the rod adds height to your room.  I raised the curtain rod about a foot  and I really like that it's off the floor-- I feel its more sanitary since this 3 kids are sharing this bathroom.

(Amy Butler Shower curtain from BB&B)

Tip #2- Update the towels!!!  Surprise, these pretty patterned towels are from Wallyworld!! Yes, you heard me right.  (Even I get surprised sometimes!) They were part of the Better Homes and Garden collection and I love the pattern.  I was almost going to splurge on some yellow ones from Anthro, and scored these wallet-friendly ones instead:-)

(Please excuse the dark pic,  this was the best one to show the beadboard)

TIP #3- FAKE IT! I used Bead Board Wallpaper instead of the real thing and that saved me a lot of $ and labor!  It was super easy to install, and it looks as good as the real bead board on the back of my lockers.  It was only $20/roll and I only used 1 and a half rolls (anyone need half a roll?:-))

The wallpaper is paintable, so we painted it to match the existing trim and tacked on a small chair rail on top.

Before:

After:

(need some vinyl for my bucket--Haley:-))

TIP #4-- Don't match everything!  This goes for all rooms in the house:-)  I got the rug on the clearance aisle of BB&B (first photo). It was from a different collection, but was in the same color family and style I was going for.  I bought 2 of them (I would have got 3 and taped them together on the bottom if they had 3 to make my own runner) but my 2 year old might have just had an accident on one of them before these pics--TMI, sorry!!:))

.

TIP#5:  Make Your Own Art!  I save a ton of quotes and things on my pinterest boards, and so I took a few of the sayings and put them together in photoshop, and printed them in colors that would coordinate with my room.  It's easier than driving to TJ's HG's to search through all kinds of random artwork.  I was able to this quickly and inexpensively with only a few mouse clicks and a trip to the costco photo center.

That being said, I did buy the canvas over the throne at HG's (which I still love to shop at). But I still had 3 other walls to fill and I didn't want more of the same printed generic florals on each one.    I will be framing my sayings as soon as I can get to IKEA for some cheap 11x14 frames.

The only thing left is this:

Yes.  This frame I cut and painted myself over a year ago that I still haven't put around my bathroom mirror!  I was waiting to get new countertops in there too-- who knows when or if that will ever happen.

UPDATED 4/26/12

Sham--wow!!  :)

Link to my DIY Framed Mirror Tutorial 

Anyhoo,  hope that gives you a few ways to spruce up YOUR powder room.

Thanks for stopping by!

DIY Window Framing and Box Molding

Before:

Please ignore the ghetto kitchen- baby steps people:-)

During:

I taped off horizontal boxes first, then vertical boxes to decide which shape  I wanted to do. Usually I like the look of horizontal boxes.  However, I did a higher chair rail and so the vertical boxes looked better proportionally.    I think they were about 24h x 22w, we just did the math to find out how many would equally fit on the wall.

After:

First we cut all the boxes and then used wood glue and clamped them together.  Then I took each box out to the garage and spray primed each one a couple of times.  Once they were primed we tacked them to the wall with our nail gun.

This is what the room looked like for a few months....

(1 coat of primer on the walls)

Then I finally got my rear in gear with the help of my awesome step-dad, and when he's around, things get done:-)   (and thanks mom for watching the kids too:-))

The window we framed out earlier, light fixture needs replacing,  not crooked in real life. This is a good shot of the builder blinds,  see how I transformed them into cute roman shades here.

I used Behr's Pure Ultra White paint for everything.  I would normally recommend a satin finish for trim, but I decided to go full on glossy finish since eventually this is going to be a more modern room, (even with the traditional box moldings) I love it.  

So now that the moldings are done and the roman shades are in, the next phase of the plan is painting the walls and putting together some art I got for the walls and some new fabric ordered.  When I'm done there will be no more red in this room.  TTFN.:-)