Playroom Planning

The time has come to transform our dining room (which has never had dining room furniture in it) into Mason's playroom.  The toys are taking over our living room and I know the toys will only multiply and become bigger and we will no longer be able to contain them in the living room alone.  
I have mixed feelings about this transformation because the dining room is actually part of our entryway, but I figure Mason is only going to be little once and when he's grown I can have a formal dining room.  
Thankfully, Brandon's dad has offered to build us a custom toy shelf and to also make us a custom rug from a carpet remnant.  Yes, we are very lucky that he is so handy!  Here is a picture of the shelving unit that he is building, only ours will have one more row of shelves:

Contemporary Kids design by Other Metros Architect ALVAREZ-DIAZ & VILLALON

I'm pretty excited about the big drawers along the bottom to store all of the odds and ends and then he is going to make the shelves adjustable so we can accommodate different sized toys.
I also need to start looking for affordable light fixtures.  I like the bright colored drum pendant that is pictured with the shelving unit but I'm having a hard time coming up with a color scheme that blends with the rest of our house and lends itself to a playroom.  I do like the patterns on these shades, but again I'm not sure about colors.

Same goes with art for the walls - I just don't know where to start.  Here are a few prints that I found that I really like, but none of them really go together, or at least it doesn't seem like they do.

{yes, an ode to Koby!}

{definitely for a boy playroom}

{I like the style of these prints}

I want this to be a very economical makeover so hopefully I can come up with a few good ideas to get this project started.  

A (Major) Brain Dump

I would call this a weekend wrap-up but since I haven't really blogged about "life" lately it is probably a more of a major brain dump...oops!

• We have really been enjoying the cool down that has been happening in our area.  It has been nice to be outside and have impromptu porch gatherings with our neighbors.  We also have taken walks and visited the farmers market without sweating.  I think it is pretty obvious this guy has been enjoying our outings, too!

• We re-planted our front flower bed a few weeks ago.  Our local garden center had all of their plants 50% off so we took advantage of the sale and risked planting the new plants in the extreme heat.  But, thanks to a little good luck and the above mentioned cool down, the plants are doing pretty darn good! 

• We went out do a belated birthday dinner on Saturday (thanks to the worst summer cold ever, we had to cancel our original plans) and I tried a new dish, grilled shrimp risotto, and I can't quit thinking about it.  It was SO good!  The risotto had grilled shrimp, snap peas, leaks, fresh corn and roasted tomatoes.  YUM!  We also had fun catching up with our good friends, which was an extra bonus :)
• We had to move our offices at work to the second floor of our building.  My department was the only department on the main floor, other than our receptionist and our production guy.  While we weren't really excited to move, I sort of like my new office better.  I was able to arrange it how I wanted it and it forced me to organize a little better.  Plus, we have a little better view of the parking lot because we are one floor up and can actually see the sky now...you have to look for the positive in things, people!
• Brandon was chosen as the project manager for the new airport terminal.  He is both excited and anxious -- excited because it was an honor to be chosen and he gets to be a part of a great team working on the largest project in their company's history, but anxious because it is the biggest project in the company's history and because it is a pretty high profile job.  This will be his only job for the next two and a half years so needless to say, he will be pretty focused for a while.
• I made peanut butter rice krispie treats this weekend.  I don't know why, but they sounded good and they were/are so yummy!! 
• I CAN'T WAIT for Fall.  Like absolutely can't wait.  I love the weather, I love the clothes, I love KSU football, I love baking and crock pot meals.  I just can't wait!
• Speaking of Fall and the cool weather as of late, it makes me want to clean out and organize our house.  So much so that one of my coworkers, who aspires to be a professional organizer, is coming over next weekend to help me get started!  
• As Mason is getting older (a whole four months!), he is getting more toys and more toys means less floor space in our living room.  So, I think we have come to the conclusion that it is time to turn our dining room into a play room.  I knew this day would come and I'm actually kind of excited to get started.  I've found a few shelving units that I like and I'm searching for kid friendly art that still meshes with the rest of our house because the dining room is basically part of our entryway.  So far, I have not come up with anything...but I will keep looking.
• We had sermon today that talked about spiritual discipline.  It really struck a cord with me and made me realize that I need to get focused on listening to God and spending quality time with him rather than just running to him when we need something.  Okay, point taken.

Well, that is about all for now.  Time to get ready for a new week!

Back At It

We are itching to get back to house projects around here.  We've taken a nice break to welcome our baby and now that we're a bit settled we are ready to cross a few more items off of our project list including a second coat of paint on the staircase walls, painting the trim in the hallway, and painting the trim and the walls in the master bedroom and master bathroom.

Speaking of the master bedroom, I recently purchased this duvet cover and shams for our room as an inspiration and starting point to update our room.

I've been eyeing this set for a while now and went to check if it was on sale recently and noticed that it was no longer available online!  Eeps!  So, I called the Crate and Barrel store in Leawood to find out if they had it in stock and they didn't.  But, the very helpful customer service person found it in a store in Ohio so I got it ordered immediately and they even honored the online flat rate shipping -- score!!  So, happy early birthday to me :)

I'm going to use this picture below as a guide for the look of our room.  We already have the dark furniture and were planning to paint our walls anyway.  The only difference will be the color of the coverlet.  Since we're trying to do this room re-do on a budget, I'm going to use our aqua coverlet that is currently on our bed, which might mean we paint our walls the lighter shade of green instead of aqua.

I would love to get rid of our ceiling fan and find a cool pendant fixture like the one pictured, but since our room is upstairs and heat rises I think we'll end up having to keep the fan...wah wah.

Of course we are also going to paint our trim to continue with the look we established on the main level.  At least this time we won't be trying to tackle the biggest area of our house at one time so it should be a pretty painless task.

As much as we would like to dig in to our bathroom and replace practically everything (including the carpet -- yes, we have carpet in our bathroom.  ICK!), we are just going to have to put some bandaids on it until we have the funds to do what we really want to do -- new tile floor, new countertops/sinks/backsplash, new shower doors, new tile around the tub, replace lightfixtures, etc.  For now, we will probably just paint the trim and the walls and call it good. 

I can't wait for this little project to get started.  It will be so nice to have a bedroom that feels "complete" and put together.  Now, on to choosing paint colors!

Monday Monday...

It's raining here today.  The nice gentle kind of rain that isn't violent and doesn't cause you to run your wipers on full blast all the way to work.  I apparently was not ready to get up this morning because when the alarm went off I remember mumbling something like "Oh...it's Monday and we have to get up," and then I heard the rain lightly hitting the windows which caused me to want to stay in bed even more.  Koby must have had a case of the Mondays as well because he didn't crawl in bed with us at all (he usually jumps in about an hour before the alarm goes off).  Needless to say, I'm wishing I was home in my sweat pants cuddled up on the couch.

We had a bit of a crazy weekend!  Between the kitchen re-do and all of the other projects we were trying to accomplish at the same time, a slight stomach bug, KSU losing in the tournament, a birthday party, and spending time with Brooklyn and her parents, we were certainly ready for some down time.  But, it is so nice to have some major projects behind us and we could not have done it all without the help of Brandon's parents.  We are taking the week off from house projects this week to rest up and get rejuvenated and then we'll be back at it to finish up painting our staircase (yes, Craig and Brandon rebuilt the staircase this weekend too) and buttoning up a few other miscellaneous projects and then we are DONE for a while! 

Speaking of the kitchen, it is looking so good!  I actually got chills once the tile went up on the backsplash.  I just LOVE it.  However, we have not put the cabinet doors back on yet because they need to cure a little more (a hard lesson learned!).  Once we have those back on and everything is back in its place I'll post pictures, but here is a sneak peek to hold you over :)

One perk of today being a Monday is that the new season of Dancing with the Stars begins tonight!!  I'm so excited to see Laura Ingalls Wilder (aka Melissa Gilbert) shake her bootie with my favorite dancer, Maks! This show really is one of my favorite shows on TV -- sad but true.



{photo courtesy of usmagazine.com}


I'm also planning to do a lot of cooking and baking this week since I will have a mostly functioning kitchen again.  I bet I have 20 frozen bananas in our freezer just waiting to be transformed into banana bread.  And, if I'm feeling crazy, I might even add chocolate chips! 

Hope your Monday is off to a great start!

House Updates

It is finally time for a much needed house project update!  We got the pics downloaded and organized, so I have no excuse to hold out on this post any longer.  Let's cut to the chase....

Here is our dining room, right before we painted the trim and the walls.  Picture light grayish beige carpet underneath that drop cloth.

And here is the same corner after paint and our new floor!

A broader shot for a better view.

Looking back towards our staircase and kitchen (we are redoing our stair case this coming weekend).

We painted the walls Mega Greige (Sherwin Williams color mixed with Benjamin Moore paint) and our trim is Dover White (Sherwin Williams color mixed with the Benjamin Moore Advance paint).  Our wood floor is a maple engineered wood with hand-scraping.  I believe the stain color is Espresso, but I'm not totally sure.  We (I use this term lightly -- I picked out the floor and Brandon and his dad installed the floor) put this floor in the entryway, dining room, half bathroom, kitchen and eating area.  And....we LOVE it!!  It is exactly what we had in mind and looks awesome with the new trim and base.

Here are a few in-progress shots from the floor installation weekend.

Here is the eating area with the kitchen to the right.

Here is another view of the eating area.

We've also started painting our cabinets.  Thankfully, Brandon has some connections and we were able to get the cabinet doors and drawer faces sprayed (for FREE!!) which has saved us A LOT of time.  

Now, welcome to our messy cabinets... (this is a full disclosure post so please ignore the dishes in the sink and the clutter covering the counters.)

Cabinets before, just for reference.

After we took the doors to be sprayed.  Yep, if you ever want to know what the inside of our cabinets look like, here you go.

{Pssst, those are my yummy Pumpkin Chocolate Chip muffins cooling on the counter.}

And, here is what the cabinets look like as of this afternoon.

{I didn't realize he was taking a pic...this is my "Deer in the headlights" look}

Our goal is go get everything painted by Thursday (we are using Sherwin Williams Anew Gray mixed in Benjamin Moore Advance paint) so Brandon and his dad can redo the countertops and start the backsplash this coming weekend.  Woo hoo!!  

So, there you have it.  A quick glimpse into our home improvements.  I can't wait to show off the finished kitchen :)

Editors Note:  As I finished this post, which took me about 5.35 minutes, I realized that I should really do a more thorough job when blogging about our projects.  This is a monumental time in our lives as we are transforming this awesome house that we love and I want to remember what we did and the funny stories that go along with the projects, because I know there are some pretty funny ones to tell!  So, I promise to do better...for me and for the readers, whoever you may be :)

So I Hear I'm Becoming A Bit Boring...

Last night, my loving husband informed me that this blog is getting boring.  Apparently, he does not like devotionals --  ha ha!!  I'm totally kidding. 

As we both know, life is definitely NOT boring right now.  In fact, it is probably the least boring that its ever been -- the continual house projects, visits from family, trips out of town, heavy workloads.  And with busy-ness comes less time for blogging and less time for putting much thought into my blogs.  Sure we have a lot of pictures of our house updates but the photos have not been downloaded.  I've been doing a lot of cooking but have not kept track of the recipe links and have definitely not taken any pictures.  I sometimes think our week-end updates get a tad boring so I have been doing less of those types of posts.  So that doesn't really leave me with much to say these days. 

However, in an effort to not become "boring" I'm going to try to give this little space of mine a new boost!  Back when I created my organization notebook, I made a place for my blog list so I could jot down blog ideas as I thought of them.  Clearly, I have not been keeping up with that so I plan to pull that out this week and start my list all over.  In the mean time, here are a few glimpses into what we've been doing in our kitchen.

We are trying to pick out tile for our backsplash along with laminate for our countertops.  We (mainly me) have been going back and forth with countertop and tile ideas and yesterday, I think I finally found the perfect tile!  Sure it isn't as cheap as the $.28 cent subway tile at Lowe's, but I think it really pulls together everything we're envisioning.  Here is a glimpse at what we've chosen:

Cabinet Paint -- yes, it is gray!

Countertops

And finally, the tile!

The tile has pretty warm tones running through it so I think it will tie in the cabinet color nicely and still provide the look of the subway tile that we like.  I haven't officially chosen the tile though.  I'm going to show the swatches and samples to my interior decorator friend tonight to get her thoughts.  But, as of now we are set to transform the kitchen in a couple of weeks.  Wish us luck!

A Sneak Peek!

Obviously my posting has been sparse lately.  We have been quite busy around our house and were without a computer for a while which has made for less frequent blog time. 

But, as I mentioned things have been progressing on the home update front.  The trim is painted and we finally got some color up on the walls.  Here is a little sneak peek of the living room via pictures from my cell phone!



{excuse the mess....which translates to the mess is DRIVING ME CRAZY!!!!}



Both of these photos were taken at night so the color, which is Sherwin Williams Dovetail mixed up in Benjamin Moore paint, appears a bit dark.  I'm in love with the contrast between the walls and the trim!  Now if only we could find drapes so we do not feel like the nightly neighborhood entertainment...

Next up on the list is to paint the entryway and dining room.  We have extremely tall ceilings in the entryway so we are going to have to get creative when it comes to painting those walls.  We will also be installing our new wood floor next weekend, which will make a huge difference!  I get to finally say goodby the kitchen carpet and hello to the lovely, warm wood floor (and visible dust and crumbs...I know!!)!

We are still planning to paint the kitchen cabinets and get new countertops and a new backsplash but we need to save a little money before we start that project.  However, my father-in-law pointed out that once the new floor is installed next to the cabinets that the cabinet painting will be on the fast track because we are not going to like the way the cabinets look with the floor and he's probably right!

House Project #1 - Painting the Trim

The first major project on our to-do list was to paint our trim white.  We have always wanted white trim and since we plan to stay in this house for quite some time we knew we were going to take the plunge and paint all of our trim white.  And we have a lot of trim!  Initially we got quotes to have it done professionally, but we knew we wanted to spend money on other items like flooring and new kitchen counter tops and a backsplash so my ever frugal husband decided we should save the money and paint it ourselves.  Oh boy!!  Thankfully, Brandon's parents offered to come help us which ended up being a huge blessing because like I said, we have a lot of trim!

Brandon and I started priming earlier in the week and got the front part of the house and the mantle ready.

Once his parents arrived, we finished priming and began painting.  I think we worked until midnight on Friday night.  Needless to say, we were all a little weary by that point.

{Brandon's dad working on the trim}

{Please ignore the kitchen!}

{Pam was like the energizer bunny...she just kept painting and painting and painting}

Yes, even Koby was exhausted.  I know he was looking at us thinking "You people are crazy staying up this late."

Things got a little sketchy by Saturday morning as I was plagued with the stomach flu.  I was pretty much in bed or in the bathroom so I wasn't much help the rest of the weekend, but the troops kept marching on without me.

Brandon's dad laid the new tile around both of our fireplaces and I am so thrilled with the way they turned out.  Here are a few pictures of the transformation of the upstairs fireplace:

{Before - with the original tile removed}

{During}

{After - with a couple of coats of paint on the mantle and bookcases}

{Up close - missing the grout on the vertical section}

We can't believe the difference the paint and tile have made in the looks of the room!  We still have to put a couple of coats of paint on the trim in the kitchen, laundry room, and half bath but it is looking so good and we couldn't have done it all without Pam and Craig's help.

Next up on the agenda is picking out wall colors because we can't live with white on white for too long and then we will install our new flooring.  Lots to do!!