Monday, October 28, 2013

The House is all Painted


Remember when we bought our house it looked like this?

Yeah. We did not like the colors. And apparently other people didn't either because it was built a year ago and took a long time to sell (we were told we were the 6th ones to have it under contract). I'm sure the others didn't back out because of the colors, but it was a hard sell. And I know the colors certainly didn't help.

Originally we thought we could paint it. We knew if we painted the trim white and changed the door and shutter colors, it would make a big difference.

After we painted the ceiling and a wall inside the house, we realized the outside job was WAY above our abilities and it would take us a loooong time to get it done. My dad is the bishop of a single's ward and suggested someone who used to be in his ward who is a painter. We had him come out with his dad, who's also a painter, and they bid out the job.

It was the first bid we had, but we were pretty sure after talking to a few people that it was a steal of a deal. So we hired them and it was mainly the dad who came out to paint over the course of about 3 weeks or so.

Just look at the difference the white trim makes!

Our neighbors noticed too. We were so happy with the progress (I'm sure they were too as we were making the neighborhood like nicer, right?).

And then this past Friday they brought the blue that we picked out and I shared this pic on instagram.

Yay! It was so fun to watch and even better to watch someone ELSE doing it!

Friday his son came with and they finished it off! The dad (sorry, but I don't think I ever heard what his name is) had everything finished (they had to do 2 coats on everything) except the 2nd story trim and the blue. He had done 2 coats on the garage, but we needed 3 coats of white in the end to cover up the ugly dark brown.

Here's a view of the back.

Our blue door!

Blue shutters

A close up of the left side

After
Before

Before and after. Isn't the difference amazing?! We love it! It was so worth the money and so worth it to have someone else do it who had the equipment and know how!

Now for some grass....coming up next spring!

Halloween Party

My mom hosted a fun Halloween party at her house a couple weeks ago (we missed my dad who was on business in India!). My sister Natalie and I are the only ones who lives nearby, so we missed my other nieces and nephews! But we did write cards and send them some packages so they felt included :)

We decorated pumpkins.

And wore our costumes.

I even helped Jackson with his.

We made mummies (hot dogs with crescent rolls) for dinner.

All the pumpkins lined up.

And Aunt Natalie read stories while we waited for dinner to cook. We love Pumpkin Soup and Room on the Broom. Those are a couple of our favorites for Halloween!

After dinner we dipped apples in caramel and other yummy toppings! This was a fun way to do it.

As all parties go, I accidentally left the caramel on the stove too long and it started to burn. We moved the pan back and while we weren't looking Ali pulled a chair over and touched the hot stove! She burned her little hand, but we had her keep it in a bowl for about 20 minutes. It is looking better now. She had 3 blisters, but it honestly wasn't too awful.

Thanks for all the fun mom! The kids loved it!

coffee table redo

My SIL, Sunny, was so nice to paint our coffee table and end table for us when we moved. Unfortunately the coffee table when we took it inside was a bit too light gray for us. So we took it back out and worked on getting it to be darker. The end table turned out great. I think maybe more glaze was just left on it? It looked great, so we didn't do anything to change that.

I took the paint that was previously used, added some to a bowl, and then put a little black paint to make it a bit darker. Then when we glazed, we made sure we left a lot on.

All done. It looks pretty weathered and imperfect, but that's how we wanted.




It's nice to have it done.

How to make shower curtains into regular curtains

Here's my quick version of what I did to make my curtains. First, I started out with 12 shower curtains. I bought them at DownEast for $10 each. It was a fantastic sale and they originally are from West Elm. I bought 3 panels per window, and I have 4 windows, so hence 12 shower curtains.

The iron became my best friend in this project, or maybe it was my worst enemy because I ironed for HOURS! Seriously. They had been folded in the packaging for who knows how long, so it took forever to get all of the wrinkles out.

I started out pressing each one.

I needed my curtains to be about 100 inches in length. They came at about 70 inches. So what I did was I took the extra curtain that I had for each window and cut out 2 stripes with extra seam allowance. you can see in this pictures that there is a seam at the top between the white and yellow stripes and again between the bottom 2 stripes. I cut out two of those from each curtain.

I cut the panels at the bottom and inserted the new piece, then sewed the curtain all back together and then I finished the seam off in a zig zag. If I had a serger it would have made life easier, but I didn't. So I zig zagged.
You can see better here my zig zag stitch on the seam on the back of the curtain. Then I unpicked the bottom hem of the curtain panel, ironed it out, and then folded under about 1/4 inch and then sewed it. Because I needed all the length I could get, I wasn't able to turn it over again to cover the unfinished seam.

So what I did next was I bought some matching ribbon, we found it at Hobby Lobby (my mom and I), and sewed that to give it weight at the bottom as well as to keep all those threads from fraying since the seam wasn't covered.

Once they were up to this point I took them to the dry cleaner and had them pressed. They were still wrinkled even after all the ironing I did.

Then I trained my curtains. I tied them off using the excess ribbon that was left over from the bottom of the curtains. I left them like this for 2 1/2 days. Impressive I was that patient at this point!! Training them makes them stay folded or pleated how you want them so they hang nicely.

This isn't the best picture, but it works for the finished product. I actually still have some weights that I bought to sew onto each corner of the curtains so they are weighted down a bit more. I've just been doing other things that are more fun :)

And there you have it! They took a long time, but they were worth it. Curtains can be so expensive! You can find panels for around $50 and up. So I figured paying about $30-$35 per window wasn't too bad.  It was definitely work, but I am really happy with how they turned out.

Friday, October 18, 2013

House Tour

Welcome back to our house! I thought I would post an update of what the house looks 3 weeks later. we've been working really hard, but there is still more to do.

I'm starting out with the living space. We got this sectional from my sister on a trade and we've really enjoyed it!

Here are some close ups of our built ins.

The other side. The middle spot has all of our TV stuff, so we are trying to figure out how to cover that all up :) Feel free to ask in the comments if you want to know where I got anything in this post and I will let you know.

I don't necessarily consider it done and perfect, but it works for now. And no, we don't have an orange tree in our house (on left), but our tree has some pumpkin lights in it.

This little end table was repainted and I should take another picture so you can see it. My SIL Sunny painted it for us. She also did the coffee table, but it didn't turn out quite as dark as the end table, so it's currently in the garage. We just put the glaze on today and I will take pics of it when it's done.

My curtains are in training right now :) I think I will do a separate post about my curtains. I made them from shower curtains. I have them tied so that they will hold their shape/pleats.

Our sofa table and extra side chairs. You may notice that I need to get a lamp shade for this lamp also.

Our kitchen table and chairs. The rug under our table is a rug Justin bought on his mission (Singapore mission). We are just using it until the new one arrives that I ordered this past week. Cross your fingers that the new rug works! I'm a bit unsure how the color will work, but I'm determined to make it work!

I may have already shown you these chairs? Justin and I usually sit here. Molly tries to sit here when we aren't looking :) We just know that the kids are messier than us. When they are more responsible, maybe they can sit in the chairs. Ha.

My mom found our barstools at World Market. If anyone is looking for a great personal shopper, call her! She found a ton of stuff for the house, even when I didn't ask for it! And I say that in a good way. She loves to decorate. Wonder where I got it from?!

The bathroom on the main floor.

 The 4th bedroom/guest bedroom/craft room.

The entry way. Ignore the packages. They are too heavy for me to lift and Justin left before I could remind him to move them! They are going to be garage storage racks. Exciting, I know.

I just bought these 2 extra chairs from DownEast a week ago. They are brand new Pottery Barn chairs.

The master bedroom.


You've probably noticed by now that we don't have a lot of pictures up on the walls yet. We are working on it. You can see the picture sitting on our floor here.

The master bathroom. We did get all of the drawer pulls done! Yay! I just bought new towels for our bathroom, but I like to lay them out and "try" them for a few days before I pull off the tags. We have a towel folded on the floor in the bottom right corner of the pic for our "rug" next to the shower.

If you read my towel post below, here is what ended up happening. I found the towels I was talking about at Dillard's. I bought 2. Then a day or two later I was at Target looking for some coordinating hand towels when I noticed Target carries the oversized towels. I didn't know they carried them! And they had them in the exact shade. Not kidding. Identical. But the price was cheaper AND they were on sale. Score. So I plan on returning the ones from Dillard's and bought one of the bath sheets since that's all they had in their store. The next day I went to the other location where they had more but then I noticed a row over that they had the exact minty green shade I REALLY wanted. And they made those in the bath sheet size too! So I ended up with these mint ash bath towels if you are really curious. The other towels were a pretty color, but they were more blue. And we have a lot of blue going on, so I really kind of wanted the mint/aqua green color.

The girls' room.
We did hang their quilt. I still have a picture to frame and hang as well as another picture that I want to paint the frame and then hang.

I also think I should get another chair to go with their little table. It only came with 1, but when they are both in there, we want another chair.

Another spot to work on!

Here is the kid's bathroom. They have the shower curtain, rug and towels that we used before we moved. I also took some of those towels and moved them to the main bath.

Another spot for a picture above the towel rack.

I didn't take pictures of Jackson's room because he was taking a nice, long nap. But I have just finished a frame for his room and I will show it when it's done hopefully!

There you have it! It looks like someone is living here now. Lots more projects to come!