Working Around the House

We've been busy with house projects lately.





I spray painted these garage sale pots a stylish shade of aqua. They are for my future potted herb garden. As of now I only have 2 herbs planted. I waited a little late in the season to start this project... oops!



I also filled this with flowers and mounted it on our back patio. It used to hang on my front porch in Houston. It was actually the first decoration I bought for that house. Sniff...


(This picture is more recent. It's been at least a month since I started this post and you can see that my flowers are still alive-- woot! And we replaced that terrible, dated, brass eye sore with a cute mason jar style lamp-- love it, reminds me of the jars kids use to catch fireflies!)

A few weeks ago I found a fantastic chandelier at a consignment store--brand new, fully assembled, and perfectly glamorous for our dining room! Not the best picture, but maybe I'll try again from a different angle in a moment when small children aren't running wild at my feet. (Don't mind the kink in the chain. We have it on a hanger so that people don't bonk their head on it. When we get a dinning room table we'll lower it.) BTW, our house is full of hideous lighting fixtures. The one we replaced was the original brass fixture that came with the house. It had been spray painted black, but it was still pretty bad; so that's one more ugly lighting fixture down about 6 more to go...



My amazing mother helped me finish some lounging pillows for our basement, but I have plans for more. The room needs an infusion of color. I'm thinking oranges and blues would be a lovely compliment to the current greens and browns.



Brandon and I finished painting Ruby's room about a month ago. As soon as the paint had been dry for 14 days (it helps with the vinyl adhesion) I decorated her walls with a 6 foot vinyl tree and the pictures that used to hang in her nursery. Then just a few days ago Brandon hung her sparkly chandelier and now her room feels practically complete. Someday I'd also like to buy her closet organizers and new closet doors (or maybe hang a curtain?), but for now I'm moving on to a new project.









And my newest project is the kids' bathroom. I've been working on it for the past 2 weeks. It has taken me awhile to move through the paint stage, because I decided to do 7 inch vertical stripes in alternating colors. Measuring, taping, and painting is quite time consuming in a bathroom with a million weird angles, but even more so when you have to take care of a toddler and baby at the same time! (Thank goodness for Angelina Ballerina, Grandma, and nap time!). As soon as I finish my last coat of paint and pull all the tape off (hopefully tomorrow?) we're going to start refinishing the vanity in turqouise. Of course we're also replacing the lighting fixture, hanging a shelf and hooks, making a shower curtain, and building a frame around the massive mirror. This is going to be quite the project, but I have a vision and determination so bring it on before I run out of steam!



*update: The stripes are done (and so is the touch up). As I pulled the tape off the ceiling some of the paint from the stripes and ceiling peeled off. It turns out that you're supposed to remove the tape right away (even froggy tape) instead of leaving it on for a few weeks--oops! I touched up the stripes easily enough, but figuring out the paint color to touch up the ceiling was quite a feat. After a week of hunting down neighbors, visiting paint stores, and contacting the builder I came up with a close match. While I was working on that I also tore apart the vanity, sanded, primed, and painted it. We're just waiting for it to dry (5 days for good measure) and then I'm going to mount the new hardware and reattach the doors and drawer fronts. Oh, and the shower curtain fabric just arrived today, so the end is in sight!