Furniture Project

Back in March, Evan and I aquired some free furniture from our neighbor. It was a huge deal for me, because we very much needed some extra drawer space in our bedroom, but with a limited budget I wasn't sure how to make it happen. I had planned to just find something I could refinish or paint to make it look updated, and didn't really have a particular style in mind. Really, I was just hoping to find a chest of drawers, so imagine my excitement when we ended up with a chest of drawers, dresser, and a bookshelf! Huge blessing!

The furniture was in mint condition--1970's retro. I wasn't really sure what to do with it at first. My first thought was to leave it as is, since it was in such great condition. Well, when I got it in the bedroom, there was just too much going on with a black headboard, cherry nightstands, and green walls. Soooo...what did I do? I sent pictures to one of my BFFs, Adriane, and asked her opinion. She's really good at re-purposing things and putting colors together, and her idea was to paint it bright white lacquer, and go very mid-century modern with it. I loved it! I'd been wanting to brighten the room up anyway, and this was perfect!

Evan, at first, was not on board with my idea to paint the furniture. That all changed a couple of weeks ago, when we decided to finish painting the trim in the house (the project that started last summer!) and completed our bedroom. (We still have Kendall's room and the living room to go!) The white trim alone gave our bedroom a whole new look, so when I proposed the furniture painting idea again,  Evan was okay with it. 

Projects ALWAYS go this way at our house:  I have an idea, Evan isn't keen on it, but ends up taking it over somewhere in the middle. I don't know how it happens, but it doesn't really bother me. :) I guess I just have a special way of asking him a million questions and opinions that he gets tired of it and just finishes it for me. Last Friday while Evan was off, we were all outside so I decided to move the chest of drawers to the garage all by myself. Somewhere after the sanding and in the middle of priming, Evan took over, and by Tuesday afternoon, I had a lovely white chest of drawers in our bedroom. I'm completely loving the finished product and can't wait to move on to the dresser! (I'm sure Evan is just as thrilled. HA!) 

Pictures to follow. Please excuse the quality! The lighting in our bedroom is terrible, hence one of the reasons for the make-over! 

Before:

(check out the wood trim, too!)

During:

After:

At some point, I will change out our comforter for white and re-purpose some of our accessories. We also need to add a mirror and change the window treatments. I'm also in debate on what to do about our headboard, it's black and I can't decide if I want to paint it or make a white slipcover for it.

Stay tuned for the next episode of project bedroom!

Pizza with the Petersens and a Christmas Tree

Yesterday I called my sweet friend Erica to see what she was up to and when we could get our girls together to play. We went back and forth on times for today, but finally decided she and Saywer would come over after nap, then just stay for dinner, with the daddies joining us after work. I was actually supposed to take food to my friend Rachel who recently had her second baby, but her family has been passing around a stomach virus and she didn't feel up to eating too much. Somehow Friday night has become homemade pizza night at our house, so Preston, Erica, and Sawyer joined in on the fun!



Sawyer and Kendall are WILD together!! I mean, absolutely WILD!!! It's really so much fun. Erica and Sawyer came over and we played outside for a while, then Kendall and Sawyer colored while Erica and I got the pizzas ready. (Kendall had been asking me all day if she and Sawyer could color together today.) At one point in the night, the girls kept taking their shirts off and we finally just gave up on making them stay dressed. I had to get my camera out because Sawyer was cracking us up with her leggings, one rain boot, and no shirt. Evan and Preston said she looked like a wrestler!!! Then, there was Kendall, putting on Sawyer's coat.

After we ate, the girls and the daddies had a tea party in Kendall's room while Erica looked through all five of my scrapbooks. (She asked to look at all of them, so I dug 'em out. It was fun...I haven't looked at them in forever!)

I mentioned in an earlier post that Evan spends most of the night hidden away in the basement studying. On the weeks I'm not working, I sometimes get bored. I mean, I can only do so-much TV watching and computering! I try to do other productive things, like bake, read, clean/organize, but even that gets old at times. I've been getting really excited about Christmas this year and have really had the itch to do some decorating. I haven't decorated much in the last couple of years just because of living in that small apartment the first year we were here, then traveling last year. However this year, since we are staying in Louisville, I feel the need to go all out.

I LOVE Thanksgiving, and have always been one of those people who thinks Christmas decor should wait until AFTER Thanksgiving is over, but for some reason this year I just couldn't wait! I thought putting out my mom's Snow Village would tide me over, but I was wrong...it really just made me want to put the rest of the decorations out. By Wednesday, I put out my Willow Tree Nativity and last night I put up our skinny tree. I will also justify by saying that the bulk of Evan's school work will be finished by Tuesday, so now that much of the decorating is done, my evenings next week can be spent with quality time/adult conversation. It's all about time management, right??!!? :)

I'm looking forward to getting a "real" tree for our living room. I've NEVER, EVER had one before, but figured since we have hardwoods throughout our house, this is the best time. (We'll see how our allergies hold up to it!!) I have plans for some primitive decorating on that tree and am hoping to get some of those fat LED lights. Evan even has plans for helping, so that should be fun!

I digress...

Anyway, for the last couple of years I have LOVED these fun, funky trees with all the jewel tones, but just haven't had the place/time for one. This year, I decided I would take the leaf out of our dining table and put a "fun" tree in the corner. I love it!

One of my wedding showers was a holiday themed, and I got all these fun ornaments that have been tucked away and not displayed. FINALLY, I have a place for them!!!

And somebody in my family please tell me where this soldier came from?!?! This is an ornament from my childhood (that I'm sure Kendall will have fun with!) and I'm almost positive all my cousins have one, too.

Overall, I'm pleased with the way the "fun" tree turned out. It's a little top-heavy with ornaments, but I figured that was safer with a two year old in the house!!!

What do you get...

When you put this: this:
and this:

Together?

Answer: SUMMER FUN!!!

Summer is officially here and I am SO happy! I am SUCH an outside person and am so happy days of spending hours in the sun have finally arrived!

Cool story...We really wanted to get Kendall a swing set. Since her birthday, I've been looking religiously online at various places, trying to figure out something that would work with our budget, secretly hoping I would come across a great deal on Craigslist or something. A couple of months ago, I just kind-of gave up the hunt, mainly because we started focusing on finishing our kitchen and I knew with that project going, the swing set would just have to wait.

To make a long story short, Evan's boss had a practically brand new swing set that he needed to get rid of at his former home. He was planning to list it on Craigslist, but GAVE it to US for FREE as long as Evan would just come and get it. Crazy, huh???

Kendall was a little bit intimidated at first. The thing is HUGE and she will have to grow into it a bit, but I don't think that will take long. By the end of the evening, she was up the ladder and down the slide over and over all by herself.

Evan and I are just in awe of this happening. I know to a lot of people, a swing set is probably not that big of a deal, but we probably would never have been able to get one as nice as this one EVER. This thing is top-of-the-line! I think it's just another way that God shows us how involved He is in even the smallest aspects of our lives.






After the swing set was all set up, all the helping families (actually our small group from church) came over to grill and hang out. The kids had a blast playing outside! Evan bought a new pool for Kendall (which I think he secretly did it for himself...I think the wading pool was a little too crowded for him!) and the some of the kids got in the water for a while.

coming along

Evan and I could easily get discouraged about how much is still left to do inside and outside our house, but when we look back and see how much we've done, it doesn't make it seem so terrible after all!

We are in the process of finishing up the kitchen right now and hope to have our counter top in the next couple of weeks. We are also adding a pots and pans drawer in between the stove and refrigerator because there is a huge gap there now. I think I'm more excited about the extra counter space than actually getting the counter top! No more turning back and forth to have a place to set cookbooks, pots and pans while cooking!

I don't think we've put any master bedroom pictures on here in the past. Here is what it looked like before we moved in:

I'm sure you are wondering if we kept the border and green carpet, right?!?!? HA! I wish I had pictures of what this room looked like right after we moved in...the carpet had been ripped out, but the border was still up. We also had our iron bed in there and sheets covering the window, one of which was a fitted sheet!

Now, it looks like this:

The terrible ceiling fan is still in there, but is really the only major thing that needs to be fixed. I'm okay with having a ceiling fan in the bedroom, just not one from 1970! It's SO ugly! We don't have any fancy bedroom furniture, mainly because we can't fit a headboard and foot board in this room and we don't want to invest in bedroom furniture until it's something we can have forever. We are in desperate need of drawer space, we only have one dresser with six drawers in there right now. My plan is to do some flea-marketing and find a dresser and chest of drawers in good shape that we could refinish and change the pulls. I would also like to add a headboard of some sort--maybe a DIY upholstered one.

We also want to frame a couple of Evan's paintings in here. One canvas is actually already up on the wall without a frame right now. And, while you can't see the curtains very well in this picture, at some point I would like to add a black valance with grommets that make the curtains go all the way to the ceiling. I also want to find a black bedspread/throw to fold up at the end of the bed.

I also found some curtains for my dining room that I can live with and Evan hung those, along with the re-covered cornice board this weekend. The curtains are a little thin for my taste, but I'm hoping I can find someone that can line them for me to make them look a little heavier and nicer. This picture is not great--pretend that ghetto ceiling fan is a brushed nickel chandelier, our floors don't have a bad spot on them, and that the table is centered--but you get the drift.

I'm also on the prowl for a centerpiece and toying with different ideas. I've seen some great larger-than-life colored glass vases that I've thought about, but also think that something flatter would be better. Evan and I eat at this table almost every night, and I want something that I don't have to remove every time we sit to eat. Any suggestions?

I know we still have a ways to go, but this house has come so far! We love our home and have had so much fun making it our own.

art

evan and i are blessed with some amazing friendships. many of which we will never be able to repay all their kindness and generosity during this season of our life. these friendships are such a gift from God, and i am so thankful.

for christmas, one of my sweet friends gave me a gift of original art, painted by our "at-the-time-starving-artist" friend, jake. my dad came up to visit this weekend, and brought my gift with him. isn't it AWESOME!?!?!?! no kidding--these blog pictures don't do the art justice. the texture and creative elements are unbelievable and i absolutely love the color it brings to our dining room! now that i finally have my paintings, i feel like i can get on with the decorating in the kitchen. we should be ordering countertop this month (woo hoo!) and evan and i are contemplating painting our kitchen a brighter color. evan is thinking red (of course, razorbacks!) and i am thinking along the lines of an icy blue or really deep purple. i guess we shall see!

Bathroom Remodel

I cleaned the bathroom today, so I thought I'd take some pictures and finally show the remodel project! I really wanted Evan to post about this, because he told me about this hilarious post he wrote out in his mind on his way home (in the wee hours of the morning) while working on the project. Anyway...maybe he'll get on here and write later about his experience.

Before...

During...

We have some other "in the process" pictures, but I'm guessing those are on the desktop. One is with Evan standing beside a mound of tile! Seriously, there was a HUGE mess! Evan had a lot of help from our friend, Garron, and we were so grateful.

After:

Evan painted this canvas over the towel bar. I love it. I couldn't decide what I wanted to hang in that spot, so one Friday night I found a blank piece of frame-able canvas in our storage stuff and asked Evan to do some painting for me. I like the way it turned out. I'm trying to get him to paint something for our living room, but he says he doesn't like to paint for me because I put too many restrictions on him. He says he wants to be "free." (ha ha ha!)

There you have it...the finished bathroom. Although you can't tell in the pictures, the wall color (that was supposed to be a creamy white) looks very yellow. We don't love the color, but we aren't going to change it anytime soon. It works. I'm very pleased with the way it turned out and I know Evan is proud to say he remodeled a bathroom!