Here is quick update, this past week has been CRAZY busy!  I have been painting our kitchen and our whole house has been a wreck for the longest time!  We are putting our cabinets on tonight and then for the most part our kitchen will be FINISHED!  I am so excited.  The only things that I have left to do is pick out a  new throw rug for in front of our sink and get new kitchen towels.  I also want to get a new countertop.
Here are some quick pictures I took this morning. 

This is the door way leading to our dining room

Next to our microwave

Our display shelf

This is a shot of our side door, I love these new toile curtain. 

Today is Graig's 38th birthday!! We celebrated by going out to dinner on Monday night.  He didn't want a present (like usual-ha ha) so he is going to make an extra mortage payment today as a birthday gift to himself.  Also today our friends Dan and Jenn had a baby boy!  We can't wait to meet him!

Soooo tired!!

Last night Ava got home from her dance classes and was sooo tired!  I thought she was watching some TV but when I came into the living room to check on her, this is what I found.  She was knocked out, poor thing she was exhausted!  Our Dog Daisy was tired too, he spends all day barking at cars, squirrels, and people so he gets tired too-ha ha. 

In other exciting news I ordered curtains for our kitchen, living room and sunroom! I can't wait to get them.  We have Roman Shades so the curtains are to add color and warmth to the rooms. 

I ordered black and white toile curtains for our kitchen and I ordered khahi and white toile for our living room and sunroom.  I will post pictures when I get them.

Tonight I am going to a spinning class, we are having chicken casserole for dinner and Brock and Ava are working on their homework.  What an exciting life we lead-ha ha! 

 

DIY Day-Sunroom!

Over Christmas break Graig and I re-did our Sunroom.  We painted it SW svelte sage and I repainted the trim.  The window trim is black and the baseboards white.  Graig re-did our wood floors, we had nasty carpet but we ripped that out.  I am SO happy with the way the room turned out!

I want to add more plates to this wall.  I got these two at a garage sale, I always find the best things at garage sales-ha ha!

Here's a better shot of the floor, I love the color that we chose.  We are going to get a new area rug for the floor. 

I also painted our heater covers black too.  I also added some new accessories. 

The other side of the room.  Ava's toys are in the corner and in the other corner is a little tv tray side table (it's just temporary I am looking for another side table I want to find one to hold our games, puzzles, books, etc.

The longaberger basket my sister gave me!  She always gets me these baskets, I LOVE them!

Happy Monday!

Weekend update!

We had a busy weekend of painting, moving furniture, hanging up pictures etc and it was SO fun!!  Our living room and sunroom are finally put back together and I LOVE the way both rooms turned out.  The sunroom looks so nice!  Our house has been a total disaster since right around Christmas time because of these room changes
Here is a rundown of what we did:  I will post pictures of our projects later this week!

Living Room (this is where we will spend all of our time)
-This past summer I painted the room Tobacco Road (I LOVE this color!)
-We painted the window trim black and the baseboards white
-We moved our very comfortable sunroom furniture in our living room
-We got a 50 inch flatscreen TV for Christmas from Santa
-We got a large area rug
For our living room we still need to get curtains and I want to get a new screen for our fireplace

Sunroom

-removed the nasty yucky carpet
-Graig redid the  hardwood floors
-I painted the room SW svelte sage
-We painted the window trim black and the baseboards white
-We moved our red living room furniture into this room
For our sunroom we still need to get curtains, an area rug and a little side table or chest to keep games, puzzles, books, etc.

Oh and Brock and Ava had a fun weekend too! 

Ava spent the weekend with our new neighbor Sarah.  Sarah and Ava have known each other for a long time because they go to the same school but Sarah recently moved into our neighborhood and Ava is THRILLED!  They spent the whole weekend going back and forth from her house to our house!

Brock spent the night with Grandma Jan on Saturday night.  They went snow tubing and Brock made Grandma Jan dinner on Saturday night.  They had so much fun together!

TGIF!!!

We are all so happy it's the weekend!!  The first week of school and work after Christmas break was rough!  It has been SO cold and with our renovation projects our house is a MESS!!  I am so thankful we have this weekend to (hopefully!) finish our painting projects and to start putting our house back in order!

I just got the Pioneer Woman's cookbook and last night I made these steak sandwiches and mashed potatoes!  They were SO good!!  She has so many good recipes that I want to try!  Her book has a ton of pictures and step by step instructions so it's really easy to follow her recipes. 

We also rented Cloudy with A Chance of Meatballs for Brock and Ava.   Ava really wanted to see it in the theatre but we never got around to it. Anyway, it was a cute movie and they really liked it and it gave Graig and I the chance to do some more work on our never ending list of house projects-ha ha!

I hope everyone has a great weekend!

Show us your life-New Year's Resolutions!!

Happy 2010!  I am SO excited about the new year and what 2010 will bring for me and my family.  We are all happy, healthy and VERY blessed.  I know that 2010 is going to be a great year for our family and of course (like everyone else!) I planned a few new year's resolutions to keep myself on track.

1.  Take the time to spend LOTS of time together as a family this year.  Graig and I both want to do this because Brock and Ava are getting SO big SO fast.  We are going to be the parents of a TEENAGER when Brock turns 13 in August and Ava will be 8 in March!  It seems like yesterday when they were this small

Now they just keep getting bigger and bigger every day

2.  Enjoy spending time with our friends and family.  We are blessed to live so near to Graig's family and I am thankful that Graig's parents are so involved in Brock and Ava's lives!  I also want to go back to Illinois again this year to visit my family.  My Mom is also planning to come out for Ava's first communion in May.  I also want to have our friends over more for dinner and cookouts, it is SO much fun when we do that! 

Ava and Grandma Jan

Ava and Graig with Grandpa Larry and Uncle Garth

My mom and sister Shelby

3.  Like everyone I am trying to lose weight and be healthier in 2010!  I joined a new gym and I have signed up for a few exercise classes each week.  I also want to eat better in 2010, more fruits and vegetables and less fast food and diet coke.  My sister Shelby and I have this same resolution so we have been calling/texting each other every day to keep each other on track!

I think that's it for 2010!  I didn't want to do too many and get overwhelmed-ha ha!  I am trying to start small.  I can't wait to read though and see what other people's new year's resolutions are for 2010. 

I made it without my hubby party!!

I just discovered another fabulous blog that features trash to treasure items!  It's called Shanty2Chic and two sisters (how cute is that?) blog about crafting and turning junk into beautiful things for their homes.  Today they are having a blog party and I thought it would be fun to join.  I LOVE making things but I am NOT creative when it comes to thinking up ideas and things to make.   I think it will be fun to see what everyone has created and get some fresh ideas from 2010!!  If you read my blog regularly (or have been to my house-ha ha) you have seen the projects that I am going to show today.

This was my first trash to treasure item, I got this at a yard sale for $30 for the chest and the hutch.  My friend Sabrina helped me sand it and paint it.  We did this about 2 years ago and I still LOVE it, I know we will have this piece in our dining room for a long time!

This was my favorite Aunt's chair when she was a little girl.  I have had it for years in our basement.  This summer I decided to paint it and add new fabric for the chair cushion.  I think this turned out so cute!

Sabrina and I also made these mirrors using an old window.  Again this was one of the first projects we did and I still love it, I get so many compliments on it!!  The window was free and we got mirrors cut to fit our window panes. 

I got this large frame in a free box at a garage sale.  I painted it green, added burlap to the back of the frame and added our monogram. 

I also made this picture hanger/corkboard out of an old shutter (this was also my friend Sabrina's idea, she is SO creative and comes up with the best projects, I keep telling her to start a blog!).  This is hanging in our office. 

Another great trash to treasure site that I just found called junk mammas they also have an etsy site and I just ordered the cutest chalkboard tags from them, I can't wait to get them in the mail!

Happy Thursday!

Top 10 decorating projects for 2009

Today I am joining Rhoda's top 10 party.  She has the BEST house, it looks like it is right out of a magazine.  I LOVE all the colors that she uses and her office is the cutest one I have ever seen!  I joined her party last year, you can see my top 10 projects of 2008 here. 

This year I did some smaller projects so I will show our smaller projects.  Right before Christmas I decidedI I was going to start repainting some rooms in our house.  I had some darker colors and I wanted to lighten them up and use some lighter colors.  I started in our Sunroom which went from red to a light sage green and now I am working on our kitchen (crazy I know!!) and I am still working on that project but I LOVE the way it looks so far!

This was the year of the monograms for me!  I LOVE things with our last name and with our initial and I seem to do a lot of monogram projects.  I also love trash to treasure things, I love getting things at rummage sales are re-doing them. 

This one was fun to do, I took an old window that I got for $3 at a yard sale painted it and put scrapbook paper behind the glass.  I actually did two of these, one is in my dining room and the other is in our living room.  I like it because it's big and it looks great hanging behind our couch!  I got this idea from Carrie and Buzzings of a Queen Bee. 

I put this monogram that I got from Etsy on a vase that I got at Wal-Mart.  I always keep a candle in it and I added candy corn for cuteness! 

I got this table for $30 at an antique store.  I painted it and distressed it using Country Living caromal colours, this is the best paint I have painted so many things with this color as you will see.  I LOVE this green color

I did this quick mini pumpkin display for Halloween.

Another monogram project-ha ha!

And another, I got this monogram from Etsy and put in on a square mini platter that I got at Wal-Mart.  I also want to get a few more of these monograms because I think they would make great gifts!

I LOVE this chest, we keep it in our living room and it holds blankets.  My Dad got it for me for Christmas several years ago and it seems like I paint it about every other year.  This year I painted it green and added (what else?) a monogram. 

Ok this is getting embarrasing, ANOTHER monogram I painted this shelf in our living room this year for a new and fresh look (as you can tell I also LOVE the color green!)

This is a similar project I painted this wooden crate and added our last name and the year we were married.

I did this little arrangement for Christmas.  I actually made two of these for our dining room table.  Super cute and they lasted a couple of weeks!

This is a picture of our Sunroom I painted it right before Christmas and my husband Graig is now re-doing the hardwood floors.

My current project, here is our kitchen in progress! This little corner is almost done, I just got these plates at Homegoods last week.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
I hope you enjoyed looking at my 2009 projects! I can't wait to see what everyone else did in 2009, thanks again Rhoda for hosting this top 10 tour!!

Kitchen cabinets-Sneak peak!

I have been painting like a mad woman in our kitchen trying to get it done. Graig has been working hard on our hardwood floors and our house still looks like a tornado went though it!


All along I have had my heart set on painting our kitchen cabinets black. I LOVE the color black and I have been slowly (very slowly) painting all of our doors and built ins on our main floor black, our trim is a glossy white. I decided to paint our kitchen a sagey green color (it's called promenade by behr). I had been looking for the perfect green color and I FOUND this color in our basement, I was going to use it in our downstairs bathroom but I never used it!

Anyway, I thought I wanted black cabinets but now I am thinking that I might try white cabinets with a light glaze over them. I am NOT sure which way I want to go black or white, I DO know that I don't want to paint them again so I might wait a few days and finish painting the walls and trim before I move on to the cabinets!

Here is a sneak peak of a little area that is almost done! I got these plates last week at Homegoods; I do know that I want to use some black and blue accents in the kitchen.

Which would you choose black cabinets or white cabinets?

A quick update!

I am still here. We have been SO busy over the Christmas break working on our house! Our downstairs and basement is one big disaster area! I am upstairs in our bedroom writing this because our bedrooms are the only renovation free areas in our house right now!! Graig is downstairs sanding our wood floors; we decided to save money by redoing our wood floors ourselves. He went last night and got all of the supplies from the Home Depot. Graig has redone wood floors before so I knew that he can do it but it is really messy and takes a ton of time. It will be worth it because I know they will be SO beautiful when they are done!

Our kitchen is all torn up too because I finally decided to repaint our kitchen! I have wanted to do this for so long but I knew how much time and effort it would take so I have been putting it off. Our WHOLE kitchen needs to be painted when we moved in our entire kitchen was knotty pine (YUCK!!) and I knew that we would have to paint it. I love blue so I chose that color and now 5 years later I am SICK of my BLUE kitchen so I am painting it sage green, our cabinets are going to be black and our trim will be white. I am about 40% done right now and I will show you a sneak peak tomorrow. I came home from work at lunch time today and I was SO happy because it really looks good! I spent 13 hours painting yesterday, when I woke up this morning I was so sore. I hope to have the project finished by the weekend.

This is what our kitchen looked like before I started painting.

Brock and Ava are back at school today, they had a one hour delay because of the snow we got last night. Ava has dance tonight after school and I am planning on going to the gym while she is there! I just joined this gym last week and one of my new year's resolutions is to go to the gym and get in better shape for 2010, I will let you know how that goes.