My Living Room

This room.  This room has given me some fits. It's the very first thing you see when you come in my front door, so I want it to be welcoming, nice and lovely.  I've changed the paint color, I've tried different furniture arrangements, I've swapped furniture with other rooms.  I don't know...I'm just not loving it. 
But here's the before, before we took ownership:

That bright red wall.  I thought I loved it at first.  But when a friend saw it and the green carpet together, she said "It's just like Christmas!"  And then I came to my senses.  So I painted the big red wall.  I eventually painted the wall of built ins you can barely see on the right.  And I painted the shutters on the windows.  That's pretty much it.
Here's how the room looks now:

 I got the ok from the Mr. last night to replace these couches.  We've had them nine years.  They've been great and served their purpose.  But our daughter whose getting married could really use them, so on to a new home.  I've got my eye on some Ikea ones. No more puffy brown marshmallows :)

Our entry way:

Not a lot of room in the entry way.  You can either turn left to the living room or right to the office.
The living room is better than it was, and that's a good thing.
Thanks for stopping by!

Home Evolution: The Kitchen

Welcome back to how my home has changed over the three years we've lived here.  The kitchen is an extension of the family room, they are one big room.  They need to flow together and have a consistent style and feel.  The previous owner was doing that, but in her 80's style.  Here is what the kitchen looked like before: 

Holy Oak, Batman!  Where do the cabinets stop and the floor begins?  Is that an oak kitchen table and chairs floating there on the oak wood floor?  I kid.  It's not a disaster.  In fact they had recently updated and remodeled this kitchen shortly before we bought the home.  New appliances, new countertops, I'm not sure if the cabinets are new or were built with the house in 1987. Their photo is extra orangey for some reason.
Anyhoo, here's the kitchen today:

I tried to get the same shot they used, but it's kind of hard to see the details.

Hello bright white kitchen.  So nice to see you.

Looking at the other side of the kitchen:

 I don't know why this picture is crooked.  Just tilt your head a bit and it will look great!

I really love my kitchen.  Classic white cabinets, wood floors, plenty of cabinets and counter space.  It wasn't that bad painting the cabinets.  (Kind of like childbirth, enough time has gone by that it doesn't seem so bad anymore.)   The only thing I would change is to have white subway tile as the backsplash. 
Oh well, we can't everything.

Come back soon for another room.

My Home: How it's evolved

We bought our home three years ago.  At the time (before I started looking at blogs) I thought it was wonderful!   Yeah it was a little out of date, but the thought of the work that would have to be done to bring it up to speed was overwhelming to me.  But my sister convinced me that I just HAD to think about it.  So I did.  Slowly I've been chipping away at things.  Mostly painting and putting my own personal touch on it.
I found some pictures of the house taken by the previous owners when they still owned the house.  I thought it would be fun to compare their rooms to mine.  I'll be featuring one room at a time.  Let's start with the family room, shall we?

Here is what it looked like when we came to see the house for the first time:
Nothing too terrible about it.  Lots of oak and too much furniture making the space too crowded and cramped.  The wall color was soft so I didn't think we needed to change it right away.

Here's how the room looks now:

Basically the only thing I've done in here is paint the fireplace and add my own decorative detail. (Previous owner made his own decorative sun detail that he attached with Velcro so he could change it out for the winter one with trees and a deer.)
  I've painted the French doors also and of course added our own furniture.  And I updated the oak ceiling fan with spray paint.  We do have a monstrosity of a couch, but this is where we hang out and watch movies, and it works for us.  We tried two separate couches in here for a while and it just didn't work.
I'll be back later to show another before and after room.
Have a great weekend!

Creamy Caramel Sauce

I like to try things out on pinterest.  When I saw this easy caramel sauce, I wanted to see if it was actually delicious and easy.  I'm sure everyone already does this for their go to caramel sauce and I'm the last one on the train.  Oh well.
 It really couldn't be any easier.  A can of sweetened condensed milk.  This is the brand I had already in my pantry.  I wonder if different brands taste different?

Put it in your crock pot and cover it with water.  Put the lid on and turn it to low for three hours.

 

That. Is. It.

Then you put it into a cute little jar to store in your fridge.

Put it on ice cream with some heath toffee bits (see below),  or dip it with apple slices, I think a caramel apple pie would be yummy. 

 

It's rich and creamy, but oh so easy. 

Thrifting around my Home

I've been doing some work on my blog and so I have to go back and look at it a lot. And I was pretty sick of looking at that big red fish monstrosity from my last post!

So I thought I'd show a few things around my house that I've found while thrifting. I love thrifting. It's like therapy to me. I can spend a little time and find something that's unique and usually doesn't cost very much. The danger is doing it too much and ending up with a lot of junk that you don't need, or bringing home stuff that really belongs in the trash. But so far, no one has told me my stuff is really ugly. What do YOU think?

Almost everything in this cabinet came from a thrift store. And I was happy to find the coffee filter wreath. I added my own burlap bow. I think I might try to add some more filters to make it fuller. These are pottery barn metal baskets. One was already white, the other I spray painted white to match. The basket and flowers are thrift store finds on two separate occasions. I thought they might like to be together.

I'm not sure what this rusty looking piece is but I love it.
  

The chicken came from a yard sale and the wooden stool and gold frame are thrift store finds.



this chunky family picture frame is kind of different, it commands attention.



This basket sits on top of my kitchen cabinets and I love it's texture and leather handles.

Thrifting is a great hobby for me, just like blogging and decorating my home.

Have a wonderful weekend!

A Rescued Canvas

I found this canvas at Goodwill.  What the fish? This thing is large and in charge!

But the price tag just couldn't be beat.  Yes please.

I didn't know what I wanted to do with it when I bought it but knew something could be made of it.
So today I decided to just do something  with it instead of let it sit in my "I'll get to you someday stash".  First thing was to paint over it and get it back to white again, like nature intended it to be.
Then I got out my letter stencils that I've never used.  If I had a vinyl cutting machine I wouldn't even be talking about stencils right now, but I don't.  So I am.

I mixed up some brown and black craft paint together and just applied with a foam brush.  Again, not really knowing what I wanted but just making it up as I went along.

I did know what quote I wanted.  So I just made me some lines with a straight edge and planned out where the letters should go.  I like how it looked, but it was too white.  So I added a little water to the paint and did a wash over the whole thing when the letters were dry.

And wiped it off with a paper towel.  .

 

The canvas naturally took the paint more saturated in some areas than others.  I like it that way, it gives it a more aged look.

And here is the finished canvas.

It fills the space on this wall in my bedroom.

One ghastly goodwill canvas rescued.

Fabulously Creative Friday

Feathered Nest Friday

A New Year!

My baby is starting Junior High this year.  The big 7th grade.  She's so excited and nervous.  She layed out her first day of school outfit last week!  We've packed and repacked her backpack I don't know how many times.  She's pinned school lunch ideas on pinterest.  Her only request for back to school clothes was a new shirt and some shoes.  But of course I had to get her more than that!  She's gone over her schedule and studied her new school map.  Starting at a new school can be a little scary.  But Isabelle has got it together.  She's got it going on.  She'll do great!

Here's to a new start and a new school year!

Updates to the master

I've added a few little details to our bedroom.  It still has a long way to go, there are a lot of things I want to add.  It's not a very big room at all, so I have to be selective in what I put in there.  So I'm always on the look out for the perfect things.  But wall space is something I can play with and it doesn't really affect the flow of the room.
I've had this empty frame for a while and decided to try it over the bed.  I printed out some of my favorite photos of us in sepia and clipped them to the wire that already existed.  I used teensy tiny clothes pins.  I noticed something kind of odd when I was hanging these photos: I'm to his left in Every. Single. One.  I wonder what that's about?

Then I saw these german glass glitter letters in Michaels.  They didn't have a B so I had to get two P's and turn one upside down. Whatever. It works.
It makes our room personalized. 

I

II

I added to our travel gallery wall from our last trip.  I just love this wall.

 

It tells a story of where we've been together.

 

A little chalk board art hangs on the wall opposite the bed.  I'm trying to get better at chalkboard writing.  It's not that easy.

I still want to change out the curtains and bedding, add some sort of soft seating and a cabinet or shelf for a TV.  It's fun to be a work in progress.