Little living room changes

Just wanted to share some little updates to our living room. Please excuse the cell phone quality of the pictures, I couldn't find my digital camera at the time.


Throw pillows for both chairs that I found on Etsy.







Put this funky plaque up above the tv, also found it on Etsy:






Painted Buddha plum and also painted this frame from IKEA and put some cute Michael Miller fabric inside.




The wall behind the fireplace is going to be painted gold, we just haven't gotten around to it. I'm not sure how I like the grouping on the fireplace. I was thinking of getting rid of the faux mercury glass candle holders and putting a fern with the buddha. I'm not sure though. Any ideas?

House updates

I've temporarily given up on finishing our bedroom because we (mostly I) can't decide what to do for a headboard or the wall we have our bed on. Instead I'm focusing on our main living area. We recently replaced our broken leather sofa and loveseat with a fabulous brown Karlstad sofa and ottoman from IKEA. We also picked up some cool chairs for a bargain through Craigslist and garage sale shopping.










Now I want to do a little changing up of our fireplace mantel.


We currently have this Buddha which I love sitting in the middle.  I want to paint him a fun color.  I'm thinking turquoise or purple.  Josh suggested white which could also be good.  We do need to paint the wall above the fireplace the gold accent color that we painted in the window next to the fireplace and in our hallway.




I also want to get a fern for the fireplace and change out our wall tapestry for this IKEA frame which I'll likely also paint. While I love all the black we have in our space, I think we need more pops of color.




Any thoughts or suggestions on colors?

Earlier this week I tackled a problem that was really bothering me in our master bedroom. I'm a little embarrassed to admit it, but I have a necklace addiction. Our dressers have these really handy knobs on the sides which are great for hanging necklaces but I ran out of space to hang them awhile ago. This was keeping me from finding things which was frustrating. Naturally my husband suggested I go through my collection and glean out some of the beads, but of course that wouldn't do because I love them all! (I actually did wind up parting with some as I was organizing but I was loathe to admit that to him!) So I found these awesome branch hooks on Amazon and got Josh to install them for me. Here's the before, and after. I would argue that my bead collection is also art. And it needs to continue growing (shhh, don't tell Josh I said that).

Solar light jar project

On a recent yucky weather day, we needed a fun art project to do so we made some solar light jars. It was a pretty easy & cheap project. 

Our supplies:
*jars (we used things that were old pasta sauce jars, an olive jar and a ball jar)
*paintbrush
*food coloring (we used Williams-Sonoma because that's what we have)
*solar lights (got ours from Target: $1 for little one on sale, $3 for big ones)
*Mod Podge (we used the outdoor variety and the glitter one)
*newspaper




Using newspaper to protect our kitchen table, painted on a mixture of Mod Podge and food dye.  Because ours is really bright, I just put in a drop of the dye. I would say we used about a 1/4 cup of mod podge for 2 jars but I didn't measure it.  We painted it on and let it sit for about 10 minutes. After that, we needed to add a 2nd coat. On the blue, yellow and purple jars, we took a paper towel dipped in our Mod Podge mixture and stippled on some more "paint" all over the jars. On the green one (which was made with the glitter Mod Podge), I just took my paintbrush with more more "paint" and did a swirl pattern.




While the jars were wet, the colors looked a bit obnoxious but they dried to a much nicer color. We let them air dry for 2 days and then they looked like this:




Our next step was to remove the stems of our solar lights. The tops fight just right on top of the jars so we super glued them to the jars. The blue, yellow and purple ones can go outside since we used the outdoor Mod Podge, but they hang out in our kitchen window. The green one has to stay inside and lives in our master bedroom. I love them. They have a pretty glow at night. I'm hoping to save up more jars and do a few more for our house.

Sofa City Sweetheart!

After much debate and a lot of sitting on sofas, we finally made a choice.  I'm so excited to have comfy seating instead of our couch which due to being broken both hurts your back and bites you in the butt. Last night we placed our order for the Karlstad sofa and footstool from IKEA. We picked the dark brown colored slipcover.  I love that it has a slipcover because we can wash it or change it out later on if we want to/need to. These are the pieces we bought.




We plan to push the footstool against the sofa for that chaise-y feel, like so.

Birdies!

Last night I put up these birdies in our room.  Excuse the rainy day camera phone aspect of these pictures.  I was excited to share them so....

Butterflies flutter by...

I just got these gorgeous butterlies from a seller on Etsy for Abby's room.  They look gorgeous on her wall and she loves them.

New dining set

My new dining table and chairs. I love them. I have been wanting these chairs for years because they are so comfy. Now that we have the new set, I find that we are all wanting to spend time together at the table reading the paper, doing homework or whatever. That is the biggest bonus to changing the table and chair out for the new ones.

IKEA goodies

I had been waiting for what seemed like forever to go to IKEA and get some things for our house so of course I have to share the highlights from our trip.


For our bedroom...









And new dining table and chairs...

Cuckoo!

Last post for today, I promise.  I think I was saving up so much and then today I finally had time to share it so that's why I'm so "talkative" today.

My Mom gave me this awesome cuckoo clock that we had hanging up in our dining room when I was growing up.  It probably needs to be fixed but we haven't hung it yet so who knows for sure.  I think we are both kind of scared that we won't hang it sturdily enough. I am planning to put it in our living room.

House updates

I have been wanting a dark area rug for under our dining table.  That area in our house seems so cold to me both in appearance and temperature wise. When we were grocery shopping Sunday night, I saw a bin of area rugs for $20. So I snagged this chocolate brown one for our house.  I am loving it so far.







I think it will look great with the new table I'm planning to get next month for that space.


I want to replace our wood chairs with Urban chairs from IKEA. I'm not in love with the colors that they have this year though. I want the blue ones for our desk area in our master bedroom. But for the kitchen I think a darker color would be better.


I finally took a picture of my master bedroom post-paint job. I am a little shy about sharing because the room still feels so unfinished to me. Also our desks are a holy mess right now because I'm purging and sorting through things. This is the armoire my Dad made me that I painted this fall. I'm still looking for some photos that belong on that shelf (don't know where I stashed them).

Around the house

A sneak peek of my new bedroom color scheme below. I loved the fabulous mood board that Eve designed for me and I took away some great ideas from that. I decided it was time for me to give up the hot pink in our master bedroom. I do of course still have it the master bath. I really wanted calm soothing colors in our bedroom. We sold our exercise bike because it was just collecting dust. We love our gym so we'd rather work out there. I painted our bedroom furniture and shelves black/brown to match our IKEA desks and Expedit shelves. I did learn through my painting project things I should have done differently. I plan on redoing one dresser in the spring.
From this:




To this:





I'll post better pictures when I'm all done painting. I suspect it will be a couple more weeks until we have time. One wall will be pretty labor intensive because it includes the our workspace and unplugging computers.

A close-up of the pattern of my new comforter. I've been dying to put it out and have had since October when I bought it with birthday money.





I have a few things on my my IKEA wishlist for our room. I love this area rug that was on our moodboard:





I want to swap out our mismatched office chairs for these IKEA urban chairs in light blue:





I also have my eye on these blinds in dark brown for our bedroom windows.JC Penney's has them on sale and they should be more on sale starting Wednesday.


At Lowe's yesterday I saw this light fixture and fell in love. It would be so perfect for our dining area. It has every color of the tapestry we have hanging on the wall.




I plan on replacing our dining table after the holidays with this one from IKEA:




I want to replace our benches and chairs with more IKEA urban chairs, but I'm not too keen on their current color choices for the dining area. They have white and the light blue. I loved the colors from last year, orange or green. So hopefully they will offer something else soon.


Lastly I must share my new Christmas tree. I am quite surprised that I was able to get my husband to agree to it.

A very blustery day

Today has been such an odd weather day.  Very, very windy.  40 mph winds with 60 mph gusts (last I had heard anyway).  It has been sunny and stormy all at once.










Today was my 2nd Thyrogen injection. It went a lot easier for me today than yesterday. I got a little dizzy afterwards but the nurse I had moved through the whole thing much faster which I believe helped the level of panic I felt to be much less. Also I had my hubby with me for moral support (and in case I passed out) and that helped a lot.

When I got home from the hospital, I worked on painting this dresser for the rest of the afternoon. I need to pull out the drawers still and do the sides of them and the inside trim of the dresser. But the dresser and drawer faces already have 2 coats of paint on them, so I'd say I'm about 90% done. After this is completed, I just have some shelves to paint and then the transformation of our bedroom furniture from unfinished pine to black/brown will be complete.





On tomorrow's agenda: radioactive iodine.