Remember when I said you can't have a pink guest room?

Well, you can't. Or I can't. We couldn't. It just didn't work. Unless our guest was a 5 year old girl. And they weren't. They were brothers, mothers, fathers and a few drunken friends. The pink 'big girl' bedding (as those mothers who recently purchased the set from Overstock for their 3-5 year old girls put it) just had to go. I wanted to buy new, but sometimes you just have to work with what you have. And what I had was the bedding in the master bedroom....which gave me an excuse to get new bedding for that room instead! Score - I still got to shop AND I'll get two room makeovers with just one purchase!

So this is the bedding I had:

Before I did anything else to the room. I wasn't too concerned about it. 

But this is how Tommy Hilfiger styled it:

Yeah, it looks nice there. Just didn't look nice in the guest room. Here's what I came up with:

See that headboard? Yeah I know, it's hard to see it. I paid 59 CENTS for it so it's okay. 

I'll probably change it another 3 times before I actually love it...thanks Pinterest for that complex!

Imagine those canvases painted pink and green...something like this:

These just looked really bad in pink and green.
(Oh hey jewelry box, haven't forgotten about you!)

And no room in the house is complete without a tgdesigns pillow:

Pretty simple but I like it!

I still have a few more projects to finish up for this room. I bought an old vanity for $5 this summer and it's about to get a coat of yellow paint! I'd tackle that tomorrow but I'll be practicing my hand at making a boob cake for the bf's birthday. I asked what he wanted, that was his first request. I'm sure it was a joke, but my baking partner in crime Val and I will be attempting one tomorrow as a practice run. Dana will be there to provide booze and suggestions. Saturday Funday - doesn't quite have the ring that Sunday Funday does, but I'm sure I'll have a ringing zinger on Sunday from all the fun on Saturday. 


Happy (project) weekend to you all! Hopefully I'll have something to report back on Monday with - besides my opinion that is :)

Be honest, which chair would you rather sit in?

Don't lie to me. Would you rather sit in this chair:

 Or this chair:

That's what I thought. You'd rather sit in the chair with the waaayy cooler pillow. I bought some new patio furniture in lieu of rent this month (which means, I guess, he gets to keep it if we break up? I mean, I paid for it, but it was in lieu of writing a check to him for rent minus half the utilities..ah guess we'll cross that bridge if we get there).

The set (a small loveseat, two chairs and table) came with some pretty - yawn - boring pillow covers. I didn't notice until we got it home that it was from the Country Living series. Now, I'm a small town girl and my style is a bit country, but that fabric was plain and boring. I just so happened to have enough outdoor fabric in the damask pattern that I love so much, so I just whipped up 4 new covers in about an hours time.

I like this much better than I did the plain old standard, comes with the package covers.

My motto in life is "don't settle, even if it is just a paint color" - I think that fits here too...just with pillow covers I guess.

Sidenote: the corner tables are from Goodwill. $4.99 a piece, 2 cans of stone spray paint and voila! - side tables! Don't be jealous, there's plenty at Goodwill to go around :)

We finished something!

Remember when the front of the house looked like this:

Pretty drab, but considering no one lived here for a year, it's not too bad.

Well we Tyler's dad finally did something about this. Ty took out all the bushes and started a landscaping project that only his dad could help finish.  After a couple days of this:

Someone must have known I was going to take a picture...always wanting to show off the "goods"

 and this:

Craig hard at work. He only stopped to sleep. Crazy man.  Much appreciated though.

We now have this:

New front patio, much better than the bushes. Chairs from the side of the road, tables from The Will.

 and this:

Quick tip: buy your plants towards the end of the season, they're much cheaper and these come back each year. Score!

and this:

Now we can sit out front and stare awkwardly at the neighbors house.

Now let's try those side by side shall we?

Before	After. You like?

Not to shabby huh? We'll be adding some planter boxes that we decided we're going to make this winter. We actually took the time to sit on the chairs last night - they're a bit uncomfortable but we got them for free on the curb so I can't really complain. I'm just going to whip up a few cushions for them in my newly finished craft room - which I just need to tidy up a tad then I'll take a few "after" pictures. We all remember the before right?

Things are coming together people...be ready for some more before and after posts!

The house before we made it way more awesome!

I was going to put these in a nice little table for you, but realized that the HTML code option didn't allow me to pick pictures I'd already waited 5 minutes for to upload, so you'll just get a running stream of photos. 

Hopefully your computer can handle all of this....

The living room with the first purchase after he signed for the house, a $25 shell chair from, where else, Goodwill. 

The dining room, complete with our $1.00 work table from the Goodwill outlet and the $1.00 broom from the Dollar Tree

Built in hutch in the dining room.

View looking from the dining room to what is now the "office wall"

The guest room...or my closet, however you want to look at it

Master bedroom, being taken over my country chic...

The backyard and humungo deck. Our yard goes back to the other house, 3 lots for this neighborhood. 

The bathroom, which is going to be getting a much needed makeover  this fall!

Our big tree, thank goodness Tyler trimmed this one so the neighbor kids don't try to climb it and break their necks...

Front of the house, with a reflection of the neighbors house, these bushes are now gone...

And so are these bushes...they're all laying underneath the back tree...

Our first dinner in the new place...we picked up those wine glasses from the Dollar Tree, you can't beat that!

Okay okay, enough bitching..how about some before and afters?

I know, this blog has turned into just my opinion. Well so-rry for being so busy with finishing up projects that all you get is my opinion.

So let me show you what has been keeping me sooooooooooooo busy....

Oh wait, wrong picture....let me try this again...the dresser pictures this time please:

Purchased for $9.99 at Goodwill, all sorts of ugly blue...	Then we decided red, which was a mistake....
After said blue and red (and some brown) were removed...	don't you have flowers on your dresser?

I even bought some glass knobs to play up the "shabby chic" (I sound so old saying that!) look. See:

I can always paint over it if I end up deciding I don't like the look of it. I guess this is the country part of my "Eclectic-Contemporary-County" style I have going on...

Now I just have to find something a little more masculine to put on his side of the bed. I have an idea, but I'm going to save that for another blog. It's quite amazing I think, but I won't be able to do it, so I'll have to send it out for completion. One thing at a time...

And after this weekend, I can't WAIT to show you the before and after picture of the garage - you remember the before picture don't you? 

D(ecorating) Day...

After several hours of drilling, screwing, and nailing - with power tools people, get your head out of the gutter.... - I finished some decorating. This wall just kind of came together, and came together nicely I think. I'll let you be the judge...

I call it Eclectic-Contemporary-Country

Most of the items were either bought at Goodwill, from Craigslist or given to us so this was a really inexpensive day...besides the trip to Wal-Mart and Ace, again.

The most expensive item is the clock - $50 from Target but I saw it one day while I was killing some time before a hair appointment, and after only buying Goodwill for the weeks leading up to that day, I wasn't sure I wanted to spend $50 for a clock. But I did. And I'm glad I did.

Let's see what else we have here:
Turquoise E - from Etsy, Ohiopicker - $40
Old school rotary phone - $1.19/lb from the Goodwill outlet
Bulletin board - $2.99 at Goodwill
3 colored frames - $2.00 total from Exceptional Opportunities in Algona, I painted them with paint we had
Eiffel Tower lamp - $4.99 at Goodwill
White shelf - $2.99 at Goodwill
All other shelves and file cabinet - FREE - given to us by Tyler's brother as they moved to New Jersey (fist pump!)
Desk - $20 from Craigslist - lady wanted $30 but I took 2 20's and she didn't have change...SCORE!
Big white bowl - $3.00 from Exceptional Opportunities in Algona
Chair - $4.99 from Goodwill - needs some recovering but I still think it looks pretty good.

So there you have it. I didn't add it up, I never do.

The other living room wall is coming together, just not as well as this did today. I need a few more items and then it'll be done. Work in progress people, I can't do it all at once so please be patient.

....to be continued....

Ahh progress...

Yes, it is Friday night and yes, I am at home. But in my defense, I got way too drunk last night and suffered an 8 hour hangover today. Not living with Val and seeing her only twice this week (both ending in margarita's) may lead to some sort of alcoholism. We've watched enough Intervention to know what to do to shake the addiction though. 

Dammit though, I deserve a night with the house to myself. We went to the bar for dinner and I sipped a Moscow Mule while the bf tried really hard to finish an Old Fashioned. Two seconds before he ordered it he told me he wasn't going to. For some reason he remembers them being delicious. That reason would have been because he was really drunk before he started drinking them one night so anything was possible.

After dinner we made a quick stop at Ace, our friendly neighborhood store. Although overpriced, it is only right around the corner from the bar, so it was on our way. When I got back home, I started work on all this:

My unfinished craft room is getting a workout tonight...

I know all this doesn't look like much yet, but by tomorrow evening, I'll have some (I hope) pretty cool cell phone pictures to post. I'm dedicating much of my day tomorrow to decorating. And I couldn't be more excited or stressed about it. I'm fairly indecisive, so putting holes in the walls only to hang something and think I'd like it better elsewhere just sounds like a rough Saturday. Scratch that, I've had worse.

These are better than the color swatches I hope...

So I posted some color samples the other day when contemplating keeping the McDonald's decor or switching it out for something a little more fresh and thought I'd get some actual (cell phone) pictures of what we've got done so far. As with most of my photos, please excuse the quality - I have an older cell phone, circa 2009, with only a 3.0 mega pixel option. Maybe someday I'll have a 'big girl' camera... hint hint mom if you're wondering what to get me for my birthday in 4 months. even though we need a deep freeze, a camera would be way more fun. 


So, here is a shot of the living room with the accent wall....

Shout out to myself: notice the tgdesigns pillow that pretty much set the tone for the entire space thus far :) and the chair that I picked out fabric for and redid prior to any of this happening. I thought this was going to be a summer of drunken love, not moving in and getting all serious and stuff....

But anyways, I just noticed that you can see the extension cord running the length of the room so that we can plug the TV in. Guess what though - there's a plug in ON THE BLUE WALL RIGHT NEXT TO THE COUCH! Not sure how we didn't notice that sooner. There must have been some other stuff going on.

Like this maybe:

I can't wait to take some newer pictures...ones without a shop vac, extension cords, and red paper on the floor. If I took it from this angle today, there would be a queen size bed in the way. It's hot up here and hot in the house. We got new window treatments too and are getting a new AC this weekend - no central air peeps, kicking it Amish style for a while, no cable as of yet either. Oh and no dryer or dishwasher either, they both went kaput the other day. And then the replacement dryer I picked up on Craigslist for what I thought was steal went kaput about 5 seconds after hooking it up. I confronted the seller about a 4 or 6 beers into the evening. Went over well from what I remember. We're still stuck with 2 broken dryers but new washer and dryer are being delivered on Thursday :)

Once I we I get it all decorated, I'll be posting more pictures. I just wanted to let everyone know that it's okay to use bold colors. They really do work out. Do not be afraid of paint - it can always be redone, just ask Val.

Would you like fries with that??

*************bleeeppp, errrrrrrr, eeeeeeee....WE INTERUPT THIS SILENCE TO BRING YOU A MUCH NEED BLOG POST....READ BELOW FOR AN UPDATE ON THE HOUSE...bleeeppppp, errrrr...eeeeeeeeeee*********************

I hope everyone read that in their best "this is a test of the emergency broadcasting system" voice....

So the house is coming along, slowly but surely. We talked about not having to do everything at once, but turns out my personality just doesn't really go for that. It's been two weeks, we have yet to have a weekend at the house (other than the weekend when we moved in) so we still have tape on the floor and the bedrooms, hallway and kitchen are in need of a fresh coat of paint.

Also in need of a fresh coat of paint was the foyer...that's french for entryway I do believe. When we moved in, this was the only room that didn't have the standard, sell your house tan color. It was like the sellers just stopped at the most colorful area and went "um, yeah, that looks okay right?? We painted everything else this  nice, neutral tan color, let's go ahead and leave the entryway red...Okay yep, let's do that." And then they put the For Sale sign in the yard.

We bought a gallon of paint from the 'Oops' section in a nice yellow color. I actually hate yellow paint, but for some reason, I liked this paint. I thought it would go well with the other colors we'd already put in the house. After slaving away on the trimming, I started rolling. I got about this far:



Excuse the picture quality, cell phone cameras have come a long way...but not on older phones.



And Tyler says "You may as well stop. I hate it. I hated it before you started."

Okay, thanks for that time waster there babe. I stepped back and thought "gawd, this looks a lot like a McDonald's...would you like fries with that shake?"

I would have liked to actually see the yellow on all four walls, but Tyler has actually asked that it be painted the same color the kitchen is going to be.  Something like this:

Here's hoping to this color working out much better than the yellow! Thoughts on the color? ...other suggestions? The other colors in our house so far are:

Indigo Batik (HGTV color from Sherwin Williams)

and

Parakeet (Sherwin Williams)

You like?

New Project!

As if I don't already have enough projects hanging in the balance, Tyler went and bought a house and I am in the process of moving in this week. We painted trim this weekend with help from him whole family but still have plenty left to do! I'll post more pictures after I take pictures of all our stuff from Goodwill and get the house painted and situated soon!

I don't think my mom has seen the picture (she doesn't have Facebook y'all, and no, I'm not going to show her how to use it...I get my patience from her, which isn't much!) So here's the outside pic for my madre:

Hi mom - are you going to send me pics of the kiddos or not? You said you would last week....

On one of our many many trips to Goodwill, the DAV, and Salvation Army, I spied this super sa-weet couch. Unfortuantely, when I went back to get it (for the craft room), it was gone. Funny story though the girl that does my hair, her friend ended up buying it. I got to see pictures of it in its new home and while I'm happy for her, I'm still really sad for myself.  Let's all take a moment of silence for the sa-weetest couch ever:

Alas, here's the couch we picked out for the living room though:

It'll work. I really just wanted the green one for my craft room, although it would have looked pretty awesome in the living room....just saying Tyler.