Where has this week gone?

This week has just flown by! Do you ever have weeks like this? Between this painting project in my dining room and a little one sick, it's been a bit crazy around here! But I am glad to say I have about finished with the painting, with some touch up left. Do you remember what I said about the ceilings, thinking it would seem easy after all the other (more difficult) ceiling projects I'd done? Well, after painting five coats of paint on the ceiling~ yes, five~ I am feeling SO done with anything having to do with the ceiling! (At least for now!)




The reason for the five coats of paint is that the first color I put on the ceiling was the light, light shade of same yellow I put on the walls. It was pretty, but I wasn't sure about it. I did a coat of yellow on the walls and knew it wouldn't work to have the light yellow ceilings. Then I rolled Valspar's white paint, but it was too gray of a white. Their "Ultra White" is a much better white. Living in the Northwest, we see enough gray~ I don't want it in my dining room! :) Now the ceilings are a sparkling white, and the walls are one shade brighter yellow than before...Still not 100% sure I love it, but I think it's growing on me. I have painted a lot of different colors since living here, and have rarely loved a paint color immediately. I give it a week or two, and if I still am unhappy with it, then I know it's time to change it! :)


I haven't been able to finish my "secret" project yet. I removed the part that wasn't working and bought the craft item I needed to finish though!





Tomorrow is Sunday, which means I will have some time in the afternoon to finish this up. (If all goes well!) If I do finish it tomorrow, I'll try to swing on by and show!

I hope your weekend has been a fabulous one so far! :) I'm excited to visit you all in the next few days, and catch up on all you have been up to! Have a great night! :)

Crafting gone wrong!

I would show you the craft I should have finished last night, but I have been experiencing technical difficulties! I put it all together, and it should have been a done deal, but I'm not quite satisfied with it.There's something...missing. So it's back to the fabric store again! There is a little hint...

And I thought since you are being so patient with me~ I know it often takes me longer to finish things than I anticipate~ I will give you a couple other hints...





I am going to the fabric store at least by Wednesday, so I should have the completed, much better, product by the end of the week! :)

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You know I've said it before~ I love to paint rooms! I love to watch how colors change the whole environment of a room. There is nothing like that first stroke of a brush, when the color is just as you imagined it would be! :) And so I'm excited to be heading on to our dining room and little breakfast area now, trying to work my way to the kitchen. The kitchen is do for quite an overhaul beginning in the next few months, so I want everything else done and ready before then!

Right now, we have a buttery yellow called "Sunglow" in the kitchen/dining room, but I am yearning for a slightly deeper yellow. I am really quite partial to Valspar paint (aka American Traditions), and love how they now have pint sized sample cans. At just over four dollars a pop, I can afford to pick a few colors to try out. (And without wondering what I am going to do with the colors I don't like.)




So I did try a few, and found I liked the paint color just one shade darker than what we have now, named "Honey Glaze". Now this might seem silly, but sometimes just doing a shade different can make a huge difference. The only thing I don't like about this color is that it's dark enough that, "for best results", I have to use tintable primer first. (Ugh!) But they tell me that I will have to paint less coats on the walls if I do. Our whole house had to be primed when we moved here because the people before us painted latex right over oil without priming first! Uh-oh! I am just glad we realized this before we painted, not after! So tomorrow I will be priming the walls and painting the first coat of the ceiling, which is going to be just a tad bit yellow. I have never done this before, but I didn't want to paint the ceiling boring old white like I always do. I mean, we don't have the popcorn ceilings in here anymore, so I can live a little dangerously! They recommended I have a pint of the yellow paint mixed into a gallon of white and see if that works. Supposedly, this will still give the effect of heightening the room without making it feel like a cave. We shall see...but I'll tell you, after painting popcorn ceilings as well as removing the popcorn from ceilings, painting a "normal" ceiling just doesn't seem so bad now! :) So I am looking forward to seeing how it all comes out!




The middle color in this sample sheet is what we have now; the one to the left of that is what I'm doing now! (I know the paper is crumpled, and doesn't look very good, but it gives you a better idea of the color!)

I will show you the room when I finish, I promise! Sometimes I have a hard time doing this because I'm embarrassed of all the other oddities of the rooms, but I'm going to push past this embarrassment and show you my progress! :)

This house sure has been an interesting experience. Sometimes it's been disappointing and more work than we thought, but lately I have been thinking how blessed we are to have a house we can call our own. It wasn't always the case. I have to be honest, though, that sometimes it has felt a little overwhelming! It's also easy to get discouraged with our progress, and to forget the way things looked before we moved here! When I look at old pictures, I'm almost horrified at how it used to be, and SO glad it's feeling like a real home. :)

Well, I hope you have a good night!

A new magazine and a fun kid's craft

I love magazines, as I'm sure is quite apparent from the above picture! And what could be better than a new magazine to read? Maybe one that is called Romantic Living?

Two sisters, one who'd started the blog Vintage Vavoom, have decided to start their own e-magazine called Romantic Living~ the first issue to be published this March! I have seen some of their beautiful pictures on Vintage Vavoom, and know that this is going to be a wonderful magazine! Did I mention that it is free, and all they need is an email address for it to be sent directly to your inbox each month? I cannot wait! :)

Here is the link to Kelli and Maureen's new blog, also called Romantic Living. From there, you can find out more about their new venture as we wait (me only semi-patiently!) for their first issue. To receive your own e-copy, simply email them at romanticliving@sbcglobal.net...Take a look at the pictures I was telling you about~ if you're like me, you'll be counting the days until March! :)

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Now, on a different topic, do you remember the "itty-bitty" craft I found to do with the kids? Well, since it's Valentine's around here (and has been for some time) we made these cute little fellows...




My son let me "borrow" the ones he'd made for a quick snapshot! Smile, guys!





Isn't he adorable?





My son even let me make one of his eight! (I liked this craft as much as my kids did!) I put it in the mailbox my husband and I share for him to find!




Put up the flag...and because the box of Junior Mints wouldn't fit inside the mailbox , propped them up against it instead. My sweetie was a happy guy when he found these! (Especially the candy!) :)


And look what I just found...




Gracie gave me one of hers, too! How sweet is that? We are getting such a kick out of this whole mailbox thing! It's going to be hard to put them away on February 15th. I have so many cute little things tucked away for my family that I can't wait to surprise them with!

I will be showing you my other fun craft in the next day or two, hopefully tomorrow, but we'll see! We're having a big ol' work day here, with my husband and I swapping "honey-do" lists for the morning! The lists can have up to five things on them, and I have already done the first on his list. (Worked on my part of "THE BUDGET".) Oh, how I dislike THE BUDGET. I even dislike the very words. My husband told me to call it whatever I wanted to then. But it's no use. I would just hate that word, too. :) No, but seriously, as much as sometimes trying to redo and decorate a house on a budget seems like trying to fit into a sweater three sizes too small, it's taught me patience. But that's another word I don't care for! Ha!

Well, I hope you have endured my blathering! Have a fantastic weekend, you all!
*Edited to add: In order to see the beautiful pictures I told you about, the right blog to visit to see these would be Vintage Vavoom~ the link is above. I'm sure they will have other pictures on their new blog, too, but the ones I saw were on Vintage Vavoom. Hopefully you are not completely confused now! :)

Rainy day...

It's been "one of those days". It's been a combination of things today, you know how it goes...Our weather has changed from cold and snowy to windy with constant rain. You'd think living here in the Seattle area, I would be used to this, but I don't think I am anymore! I say this because when my husband and I got married, he was attending grad school in Maryland, so we lived there for the first four years of our marriage. One thing I miss about it was the sun! The summers were really hot and humid, but the winters were so sunny, even though it was usually very cold! Now I don't miss the enormous bugs or the humidity, but oh, that sunshine! Our first winter back here, I couldn't figure out why I felt so well, "down"! But I really think now that I had acclimated to the way things were in Maryland and all this gray was really getting to me! The weird thing is, it's been a long time since we've moved back here, and I'm still dreaming of sunny places!

SO...it's rainy, and what's a girl to do? (Besides buy a raspberry hot chocolate from Starbucks!) One thing that always, and I mean always, brightens my day (and my outlook on life) is a really fun craft. I found a great tutorial to help me with something I have been trying to make. All I can say is, it is SO much easier when someone who knows what they're doing explains it, versus "going it alone". :) I also found an adorable little craft to do with the kiddos! (And I mean itty-bitty little!) I will be showing these two crafts to you in the next few days...

What do you do when the winter weather has you feeling gray? Aren't you glad it is getting closer to Friday? We are more than half way there! :)

No way!

This was my initial reaction to winning a giveaway that Memoirs Of A Southern Domestic Goddess held a while back. I've never really won anything before, unless you count when Bally Fitness let me know I had "won" some free gym time. (To encourage me to sign up for membership, I think.) Although, truth be told, they sent everyone this, so I don't think this counts... Anyhow~ the gift was $20 toward anything in her Etsy shop, and since I'd been drooling over her fabulous tutus, I didn't have to think very hard about what to buy!




I was so excited when it came in the mail this weekend! I just love the cranberry and cream colors together, with the pretty rose she'd added to it.




Thank you so much, Southern Domestic Goddess! The tutu is absolutely gorgeous! If you like this tutu, be sure to check out her Etsy store site at www.chicksinthesticks.Etsy.com/~ She has many other crafts available, and all of her creations are amazing! :)

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Okay, and here is a little craft that I finally finished up recently...







I got this idea from the July issue of Romantic Homes magazine, and had to make a little trip to the craft store. It wasn't until the fall that I really started working on it. (Summer time is so busy!) I tweaked and added and removed from the original, but it is essentially the same idea. The original one in the magazine had glitter on the large starfish, which was really pretty. I was just going for a simpler look. Romantic Homes recently shared the directions for making this Jeweled Starfish in their November issue, on page 6, which will be nice when I make the next one. They had good ideas, such as using primer, (oops!) and Spray Mount adhesive before sprinkling the glitter on. I just thought I'd share all this extra info in case someone wanted to make one, too! The embarrassing ending to this story is that I only finished this little craft right before Christmas! Removing all that popcorn off the ceilings really took front and center stage this fall! (And boy, am I ever glad that is over! ) I have a few other ideas for more starfish creations...

Well, I hope you are having a good week! Have a great night! :)

You've got mail!

Confession: Our Christmas tree hasn't even come down yet (until tomorrow) and we have already started our Valentine's Day preparations! :) Is this a terrible faux pas? I hope not, because we've already got the ball rolling, so there's no turning back now! So on this subject, I was at Target last week, and look what I found in their dollar section?



The cutest little Valentine's Day mailboxes, which come in red, pink, and white. (Of course.) And I had a great idea, one I knew the kids would love. They each have their own mailbox, and my husband and I share one. From now until February 14th, we are going to sneak little notes or cards, treats, etc. into the mailboxes! It has been a big hit already, and I think it will be a tradition! I also picked up cute Valentine's socks for the kids and a little box of candy for everyone. Once a week, I am going to put something extra special inside the mailboxes, and these will be just perfect for that! All of this I found in the dollar section! :) AND I found these...



It's true I paid $7 for these crafting supplies, but it would have been a whole lot more expensive at Michaels, as much as I LOVE that store! The chipboard letters are so expensive that I have started tracing the ones I have onto white cardstock and then glittering them up. I like the look of those nice, big chipboard letters, but not the price! The ones here were just one dollar for each alphabet, so I swept them up! And this leads me to my second confession: The first craft on my list for this holiday was, you probably already guessed it~ a banner! Are you sick and tired of seeing these yet? But you know, I like me a nice banner!




I am sure you won't be surprised that this will not be my only banner...stay tuned for more. Or not, if you are thinking banners are getting a little old. :) (I really am physically able to do other crafts, but this is the top priority craft, so it gets done first around here!)





And I can't wait to read this magazine! It came a week or so ago, and I've still barely peeked at it! Does anyone else enjoy this one? The cake on the front looks SO good, I think I'm going to have to try it out! :)

So are you thinking about February 14th? What kind of traditions do you enjoy each year?

Have a blessed night! :)

A new year!

Hi you all! :) Can you believe it's 2009? For some reason, New Year's always has the element of simplicity and relaxation that I really wish Christmas did! We brought in the new year watching "The Last Sin-Eater" (a great movie!) at home. I spent today baking with my oldest daughter, who is the only one of our kids home today/ tonight...So our New Year's has been a good one, and I hope yours has as well! What did you do to celebrate the new year? Did you make any "new year resolutions"? I have to decided to relax more with and enjoy my kids/family more (like I was telling you about in my last post).

I hope that this coming year will be a wonderful one for all of you! :)