A burlap wreath

Burlap meets velvet...






I first saw the idea of a burlap wreath on Jen's blog at The Candlelit Cottage, who saw this on another blog. I am not sure of which one it was, so if this is your idea, please let me know so I can credit you with this idea! :)

I must admit I always love the wonderful things I see you all doing with burlap and they always look SO cute...the weird thing is though when I would go to the fabric store and look at the burlap, it just didn't seem like "me"...

But when I saw Jen's wreath, I knew I had to try it! It was one of the sweetest wreaths I've seen...

I originally chose velvet ribbon for the bow, but it made too small a bow, so I copied Jen (again) and made one out of some fabric I had on hand. But I had to tie the wreath up and hang it with something, and so the velvet ribbon it was after all! I love the difference of textures...

Now I am looking forward to making another one with a different color of burlap...and it is ever so simple! All you need is a wire coat hanger, burlap and ribbon! I "opened" the hanger and fed the burlap onto the hanger in folds. It was easy, but it did take me some time, and it took about two yards of burlap. Whether this is normal, I don't know! I just went with the flow! I adjusted the burlap folds how I liked them, and reconnected the two ends of the hanger...

Well, that is all for me for now! :) You all have a good night! :)

Blessings,

Finish it Friday...on Sunday!

Yep, I know what day it is! Here it is, the first day of this weekly post theme, and I am already late! Let's just hope it doesn't become a habit...sMiLe! :)

Are you all having a good weekend! It is the best part of the week, don't you think? :)

Okay, remember the shutters I wanted to tackle this week? Well, I mostly finished them...




This is about what both sides looked like. I painted the first side of each and they looked much better...




It was mostly finished except for a little touch up, and I decided to get creative. That was a mistake. So now I am painting over my "creativity" and then can finish the other side. But hey, they are out of the garage and half finished...so I am counting it as a 75% success...I will show you them when I put them up on the wall! :)

And I do also want to show you this:

On a recent visit to IKEA, I saw these sweet little vases~

And at only 79 cents a piece, I just couldn't resist buying them! ;) Michael's Crafts had these faux red flowers~




And now they are up on our kitchen window sill~







Every time I look at them, they make me smile! And do you see that the trim around the window is finally up and painted? It was so nice to finish this and it makes the window look so much better!





I decided to use the same trim around the window ( I think the technical term for it is "ply cap") that I used for the bottom of the upper cabinets~ you can see it is the same in the picture above. I used the miter box for this instead of the table saw, and it worked just fine! :)




So you can see, it is all coming along, slowly but surely! I haven't put things how I want them in the upper cabinets yet, or hung the little panels that go with the valance, but will soon!

We hung the curtains up a little higher than we normally would have, thinking it would be nice to see as much out of the window as possible, but I think they are too high up. Any thoughts on this?

Well, I sure hope you all are doing well, and have a good night! :)

Playing with colors

How are you all doing? I sure hope you are having a good week! :)

I have been playing with color in my kitchen, as you know trying to decide between aqua and green I wanted to say a big thank you to everyone for your thoughts on which color would be the best choice. :)


I paid a visit to Benjamin Moore paints and they color matched my aqua bowls, and I was surprised at how dark the color was. They added some white tint to it, but it is still WAY too bold a color for me! It's a beautiful color, but just not the right shade...

I also bought a pint of a color I liked called "spectra blue" that is aqua, but much lighter.



I tried it on a section of the bead board in one of our cabinets, and don't really like the way it looks...

But now I have an idea that I am going to give a try... Instead of a color like green or aqua on the walls and inside the cabinets, I am going to paint a much more neutral color, such as oatmeal. I like this color a lot, yet just haven't found the right place for it in our home. Maybe it's meant for the kitchen! Then I could just add a lot of red and aqua accents, but switch it out easily the aqua gets old. And then I can use the green! ;) It would be simple also to remove all the color if I wanted a fresh completely neutral look! :) And you never know, maybe the walls WILL end up one of the paler shades of aqua on the paint strips...



Oh, and while we are talking about red and aqua, look what cute Valentine's tissue paper I found at Michael's! All of their Valentine's gifting supplies are in red, aqua and white! :)

And just one more picture here, because it fits in nicely with kitchen talk...


Country Living


Aren't these so cute? And wouldn't they make washing dishes fun?

Well now, thank you for listening to my ramblings! Have a great Friday! :)


blessings,

Finish it already!

We have a two car garage, although in truth, it would be a darn tight squeeze to fit both of our vehicles into that space...On one side of the garage, my husband parks his car in the winter. On the other side we have our kid's "outdoor stuff" bins and their bikes...and "my" furniture and little odds and ends. You know, the things you rescue from a thrift store or buy at a garage sale to fix up, that never quite get fixed up...please tell me someone out there knows what I'm talking about!

So I promised my husband that I would not start on the wide plank flooring for our kitchen and dining room until I cleared out that space. SO, because a deal is a deal, and I'm not one to break a promise, I am going to start working on this.

Then I thought about the rooms in our home that are so close to being finished (at least for now) but just need that little last couple of things done. Things like curtains or one last paint coat on the moulding, etc.

So I'm starting (and am going to finish!) a new weekly blog post. Every week I will show you what I am going to work on, and then I am going to show you the "after" on "Finish It Friday!"

One thing at a time, I am going to tie up all these loose ends and organize this life!

So here's what I am working on now:

1.) You may remember how I painted my aluminum garden window this past fall...well, now I am painting our ugly slider. It will be at least until this spring/summer until we replace it with French doors, but I needed to do something about it in the meantime...




2.) I am finally pulling out those old shutters and finishing them!


3.) And putting some of this~




on these pantry doors~




and hoping they look a little like this~




when they are done!

NOW...I will at least have one of these completed by Friday to show you. :)

What do you think?

Red and green OR red and aqua?

Okay, here I am with my kitchen almost *done...and here I also am second guessing myself. Again. So that is where I hope you might have an opinion that would help me make a decision! (And finish the project, which my family would really REALLY appreciate! :)

SO, here's the deal:

I originally intended to do a red and aqua color combination in our kitchen when I redid it...I was going to keep the yellow walls in the dining room and on the one wall that goes between our kitchen and dining room. I have covered the walls in the kitchen with bead board that I then painted white, and the lower half of the walls will have bead board in the dining room, and on that one long wall that connects the two rooms.

BUT, as I was working and things were coming along, I realized the yellow was not going to work in the kitchen, especially not on the bead board inside the upper cabinets. This is where, instead of aqua, I chose a pretty minty green...

I can't explain it, but it was the right color. So the color scheme changed to red and green with a lot of white, minus the yellow. I painted the half walls the same green, and have been second guessing myself ever since...

Do you like this color combination~




Or this better?




Do you think the cabinets would look better with this green on the bead board~




Or with a nice light aqua instead?


You see, green is always pretty...




It seems to adapt well to almost almost any color or decor you add to it.




But when I put my aqua bowls on the counter next to the cherries sugar canister, well, I really started to doubt my color choice. See how the colors pop!




However, there is one thing I do know for sure...at least I think I do! ;)




I have had a great deal of this red and white checked fabric for a couple of years now and am going to use it to make long panels for our kitchen slider (soon to be French doors) and our dining room window...

Well, that is all for me tonight! I hope you all are having a wonderful week so far!


Signed,
The Desperate Decorator,

*Anything and everything is still subject to change, and is anything ever really "done" at my house? Uh, no. Mostly because I keep changing things...

Movies

One of my husband and my favorite things to do on the weekend is watch movies we put on Netflix...and boy do I love Netflix! No late fees, no returning the movie to the store, just a quick jot to the mailbox...but I digress...so anyway, it's fun and it's cheap entertainment, and it's our form of zoning out! And in life, you really REALLY need to escape the "real world" from time to time, and whether it's in the pages of a great book or in a movie, I think it can be truly therapeutic!

SO...we got to see this~




And I have to say I really enjoyed it. Have any of you seen this, especially those of you who live in the U.K.? It is a British T.V. film about a girl named Amanda who loves Jane Austen's book, Pride and Prejudice. One evening, she discovers Elizabeth Bennet (the main character in the book) in her bathroom, and eventually a door that leads into Elizabeth's world. So she gets the chance to essentially live in the story of Pride and Prejudice and meet all the characters...it has some things in it that I really wished they had left out~ it would have been even better without them~ but even despite those things and a few other things that seem a bit contrived, it inspired me to read Pride and Prejudice. I always thought it would be dull, but it is such a great book so far!

And so now we are putting this is our queue at Netflix~




For though it's true we saw this before, I suddenly feel the need to see it once again! And this was a good movie as well, and as I remember, a completely clean film, which is always refreshing! I can recommend this one highly!

So what movies have you seen lately that you loved? And what is your favorite~ comedy, drama, classic, suspense...?

I hope your week is going well! :)

Getting things back to normal...

Hi everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and a very Happy New Year to you, too! Tomorrow we all go back to our normal routine, with kids at school and my husband at work...it is hard to let the vacation go! It feels SO good to be blogging again, though! I kept telling myself I wanted to have something "fun" to share before I blogged, and not just drop in to give you an update concerning my husband's health, not wanting to bore you or anything, but I recently realized it was really and truly quite rude of me NOT to give you an update much sooner...please forgive me?

The reason we were so worried was because the doctor found my husband's blood pressure to be REALLY high, and they ran an EKG on him and it came back abnormal, showing that his heart was enlarged, which means that it has to work harder than it should to pump blood. This should not be the case for someone who exercises regularly. So they scheduled a stress test, which includes an ultrasound and another EKG. They also put him on medicine for the blood pressure. The thing that was so worrisome is that having consistently high blood pressure can cause heart and kidney problems...So I was VERY worried, as you know.

I was SHOCKED when the stress test came back NORMAL~ shocked with happiness and relief beyond anything I've ever known! His blood pressure was also in the range his doctor was hoping for. The blood tests showed good things too~ his kidneys are in perfect shape. ALL of this shows that the medicine is working. I was disappointed when he checked it this week and it was higher, but he reminded me that it IS so much lower now than it was.

SO, thank you all very much for your prayers and thoughts~ they meant so much to me! :) And thank you again for listening!

BUT...I cannot leave you without showing you something pretty, so I wanted to show you this...

I have been looking for certain curtains online EVERYWHERE that I had seen on another blog, and couldn't find them, until I checked at the Country Curtains website.




I love these in the gold fabric, although they also come in other colors. I love the way they puddle on the floor...just delicious!

But they have many, many more curtains to choose from...

And what I love is that they have their curtains in an assortment of colors...




For example, the red is really pretty, but what if you want them in black?




They not only have them in black, they have a coordinating valance to go with them!




sigh...

I love how they have every style you could imagine, too. These are just some of the ones that caught my eye! :)

Well, that's all for now! I hope you have a great Monday! :)

Blessings,

P.S. I can't get the font to be smaller at the end here! Arg! Sorry for how it looks!