Tuesday, July 31, 2012

something I love

About having an iPhone is the ability it gives me to document our lives without having to pull out my big camera.  Plus with instagram all I have to do its pop on a fancy filter and BAM I'm an artist.  I love being able to capture these little moments so later on in life-or even this week if I'm having a rough day, I can SEE the fun or sweet things the girls did and remember all my hard work is for a higher purpose than my own:)

In the last few weeks I've:
been impressed with Gwen's artistic abilities,

and the fact that she made her bed all by herself for the first time ever! without any prompting at all! This was a proud moment

We laughed at this little baby who wants to be big


and fell a little more in love.







I walked in on this sweet moment.

Ignore that messy bookshelf please...

And took my sister to get her drivers license. 




We also went to a bridal shower for my cousin where I held this baby for all of 5 min thanks to sweet grandmas and great aunts




I made a pretty quiche


and a cute costume for Gwen.


Shes going to be Astrid for a how to train your dragon party tomorrow.  Can I just be amazed for a second at how TALL she is!?  Where is my baby?!

I hope you enjoyed this photo-dump! Lets do this every couple of weeks ok:)

Monday, July 30, 2012

I've been working on....

Our bedroom.
I've been making adjustments here and there ever since we started in this room
(when it looked like this....yikes!)

We started here with blue walls and a hodgepodge of accent colors and its slowly improved since.  The first change we made was the wall color here.  Then I bit the bullet and painted a bunch of stuff white to contrast with my newly painted walls here Then there was the great chair project which took forever but my excuses are good-read them here.  Then I spent a few months trying to convince Michael that our new gigantic bed dwarfed our nightstands and we would need new ones. (seriously this bed is huge...) I failed to convince him this was a 'need'  so we compromised by replacing the lamps and shades with these bigger yellow bases from Target and these crisp tall shades from the pottery barn outlet near my house-they were a steal at $14 apiece!
 

They definitely carry more visual weight than these.

 (which i still love and recovered myself here)  then
I decided our bedroom needed something bold and fun and these
just did not make the cut-so they got cut-into strips...and then sewed together again!

 

  It was just what this room needed




I think this might be my favorite part..

My most recent tweak on this space is putting something above our massive bed. I wanted something graphic but not too girly since my husband lives here too, and cheap. Cheap was very high on my list. I don't know if you've ever been in the market for large scale artwork. Its decidedly not cheap.  After stalking Pinterest and Hobby Lobby and Target and not really finding anything I loved I decided to go the DIY route ( is anyone surprised by that? ) I ended up with this!

its a wall decal from stuck to a canvas and coated with a thin coat of matte modpodge. And I think its super cool. Especially in that it mirrors the bold black and white we've got going on across from it in the curtains.  So there you go that is what I've been doing.

What projects are you working on??

Friday, July 27, 2012

Math=Love

Just kidding. I hate math. What I love is this Pottery Barn inspired artwork that cost next to nothing to recreate!



 You wanna make one too??
 You'll need:



* A Frame. I got mine at the goodwill outlet for $7.
 (I pretty much never pay full price for a frame-spray paint is your friend people!)
 * White foam board
* Scissors 
*A writing utensil of some sort
* Black acrylic paint
*A hard angled paintbrush
* A teensy bit of artistic ability ;)

First you'll need to choose your font. I used 'mouse deco' from my favorite font website dafont.com

 Print and cut out a template! For my frame size, a 16x28,  I made the number size 575.



For the plus sign and equals line I measured the width of the letters and cut strips from the same piece of paper.



Cut out a piece of foam board to fit the frame



And trace the letters on. I taped them down while I traced-no shifty business







Now-paint those numbers!   In a dark room preferably.  With a 4 yr old present to bump you if
available.



 smooth out the bumps...



 Then stick it in your frame and admire!
 
  
 This was a super cheap project -I already had everything to make it! but even if you had to purchase all of the supplies it probably wouldn't cost more than $20.  And in case you didn't realize its 2 parents plus 2 children= 4 in our family! When another little one comes along I'd love to make a 2+3 one to add and someday have a little display of flashcards.









Thursday, July 26, 2012

Messes

EVERYWHERE.  We are attempting to do 2 spaces at once. Its twice as messy-go figure...

we started on this bathroom first-remember this?

and this?

 We're here now:


but this is after we discovered a completely rotted out beam that depressed Michael for a whole week before he could muster up the motivation to replace it-This man is just amazing in his abilities to fix things.
 His man card totally gets another stamp. He's probably filled out at least 10 by now.  Anyways after fixing the beam he put put in the new subfloor and this window.


and up went the sheetrock and the mud

this is an old hat by now...


We also tore out the living room.

Why? Because we're crazy people. Obviously.  We have some serious momentum this time though. From Saturday to Monday it went from this


 to this.


 That is some speedy demo to construction for us weekend warriors. Thanks is definitely due to our good friends Jerry and Jordan and my brother Justin.

and also this fancy new toy tool we got off of Craigslist.


 This my friends is a Sheetrock hoist aka back saver. Isn't he handsome...;)