A hint of red to make them pop

After a little hesitation, I finally tackled the “E” painting. We hung these letters a while back (see here) with the plan of painting them so that they would pop off the wall a little more.

But then, I fell in love with the imperfections and the raw quality of these metal letters and didn’t want to take away from that. So as a compromise, I painted the outside of the letters and left the inside in its natural state.

 

Don’t you just love the inner grittiness? And I think the red works perfectly. I used a red spray-paint that I bought at Lowes. I had to contend with some bad spray-painting weather for a while. It was coldy and rainy, and although I was doing the painting in the garage, the humidity caused the paint to bubble up in some areas. So I had to sand it down and reapply. And getting the inside of the lowercase “e” was especially tough. That’s one tight little space. But in the end, I’m pleased with the results. We get a lot of compliments on those letters.
 

2 months later…

Wow. I can’t believe it’s been almost two months since my last post (sounds like an introduction at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting). My workload has been insane, which I’m not complaining about. But it did take away most of my spare time, causing me to fall way behind on so many things (e.g. this blog).

Other than work being uberbusy, we also became the proud parents of a new little puppy. Meet Rusty…

We’ve had Rusty for about one month now. My father found a litter of 5 pups abandoned on the side of the road. We had no plans of getting a dog for the kids anytime in the near future, but as soon as Simon laid eyes on Rusty, it was over. He was in love. So I called my husband and told him I was bringing a dog home.

It’s amazing how much more chaotic life becomes when you introduce a puppy into your life. Especially when you have two young boys who just can’t get enough of him. But we are all adjusting and getting into a groove.

We had no idea what kind of dog we now had living in our house. But after a couple of guesses from friends and strangers, we had it narrowed down. And then a trip to the vet confirmed it. He’s a mutt, but the dominant breed seems to be Catahoula Leopard Dog. Then we were told to expect him to weigh 70-90 lbs. Say what!?!

Even with all this craziness, we have managed to get a few small things accomplished around the house, so expect a few updates very soon.
 

It’s starting to look a lot like somebody lives here.

That’s because our living room walls are becoming less and less bare. Wahoo! We still have yet to tackle the gallery wall, but we’ve hung things on every other wall in the room and that makes me giddy with excitement.
 

 
The Etsy prints finally have a home.
 

 
And so do these wall shelves that we scored (totally free!) a couple of years ago. For now, we just threw a couple of things on them so that we didn’t have empty shelves hanging on the wall. Do you like that big white hand we found at Home Goods for only $10? Because I do. I love it!
 

 
Ok, now I know you are completely jealous. I mean, hello, look at how awesome these are. My sister scooped these up for me at Round Top flea market in Austin since I wasn’t able to go myself. We do plan to paint them, but just couldn’t wait to hang them.

Just getting a few things up on the walls has made the living room feel so much cozier. Exactly what I was wanting.
 
 

Quickie Bathroom Makeover

A couple of weeks ago, Alex and I decided it was time to tackle the half bath that is connected to the office. We were tired of the sickly, yellowish coloring that the antique white walls were giving off. And since this is the bathroom that visitors tend to use the most, we wanted to freshen it up a bit without spending a lot of money (or time). We have loved the gray that we painted the living room, and we just so happened to have half a gallon left. So we got to work. This was no easy task considering the size of the bathroom. Just getting in there to take some photos proved to be difficult as well. But I did my best!

Here is how blah the bathroom looked before:
 

 
See, I told you it had a sickly yellowish glow. But not anymore:
 

 
Like I said, we used the same gray that we used in the living room. It’s called Versatile Gray, which I would say is very accurate. As you can see it calmed down the yellow a lot. That’s not photoshop, people! We also took down the mirror that was originally in there, and replaced it with this $10 estate sale find that we painted a turquoise blue for a pop of color. We plan to add some sort of embellishment to the mirror just to jazz it up a little more, but we haven’t decided on what just yet.

We hung a metal and glass shelf above the toilet that will evenutually hold candles, towels, books, etc. This has just been sitting in our attic waiting to be used. Alex had bought it for his apartment years ago, and we held onto it knowing that one day we might need something like it.

We still need to finish decorating the bathroom with final touches such as putting things on the shelves, buying new towels, and possibly hanging some artwork. But we think taking a few hours out of one weekend just to paint and make a few small changes has
made a world of difference. Eventually we will replace that old sink/vanity but that will come later, much later.
 

Pallet Frenzy

Turning regular old pallets into something new and amazing has been quite a trend lately. And I am all for this trend. If you tell me that I can update something old and inexpensive and turn it into something modern and amazing, I am all over it.

The summer here in Texas has been miserably hot. But with fall fast approaching, I am dreaming of a patio in which to enjoy the soon to be cooler weather that we got a glimpse of this weekend. Our backyard will be a work in progress for a while unless we win the lottery sometime soon, but that doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy an evening sitting on the patio with a glass of wine when it’s too dark to notice the current, dreadful state of our yard. Right?

Well, at this point, I have nothing to sit on out there. And that’s where my dream of a pallet makeover comes in. I’m in the process of convincing Alex that this would be a great affordable start to a patio, I’ve dug up a few photos of pallet seating for inspiration/encouragement.
 

 

 

 
I just love this pallet swing!!! That’s it…I’m adding a pallet makeover to my ever growing list of projects.
 

My very own Etsy shop

I know I’ve mentioned my love for Etsy a time or two by now. And finally, I am officially part of the Etsy community. I just set up my very own Etsy shop. There isn’t much to it yet, but I plan to add more very soon. Of course, I came up with this idea over a year ago, and am just now getting around to it, so “soon” is being used very loosely here :)

Until we bought this house, I never stayed in one apartment or rental for very long. So I was always coming up with ideas for wall art that were inexpensive, but still added some color or visual interest to a room. Add that to the frustration of having to tear apart a puzzle that took you forever to complete (because I’m definitely not framing it), and voila! You get a painted puzzle to hang on your wall.

I am also planning to add revamped furniture items. Notice I didn’t say “soon” this time.
 
 
 
 
 

Gallery Wall Inspiration

There has been a lot of gallery wall talk in our house lately. We are gearing up to tackle the wall above the new bookcases. We want to fill it with a mixture of art and photos, but mostly old photos we’ve been gathering from our parents’ and grandparents’ albums.

I’ve put together a few images of gallery walls that I think are done really well. Hopefully ours turns out as nice as these.
 





 
And, just for fun, here’s one of the photos that I found at my parents’ house. I love this photo of my dad and me!
 

 
 

Vacation’s over. Back to the daily grind.

Why does a week of relaxing at the beach go by so much faster than other weeks? It’s not fair.

We are back from our trip to Surfside Beach, TX. The reason for this getaway was to celebrate all of the big events that happened in my family this year. My mother retired, my sister and her hubby turned 40, I turned 30, my sister-in-law turned 40, and a close family friend turned 50. Not to mention it had been a few years since we had all taken a trip together. It’s hard getting us all together because there are so many of us.

I am one of six kids. All but one of us are married, and my single sister always brings her best friend (that close family friend I mentioned above) whose been part of our family for about 12 years now. Only three of us that are married have kids so far. I have two, my sister has three, and my brother has five. Oh, and out of all 10 of our kids, 9 of them are boys.

We always have a good time when we all get together. And this was the first time we had all been to the beach together. There was a lot of swimming, sand digging, crab hunting, clam collecting and boogie boarding happening all week. Unfortunately, we were unimpressed with the beach house itself. The A/C upstairs went out and didn’t get fixed for 2 days. Two of the burners on the stove didn’t work (not good when trying to feed that many hungry people). And there was a horrible smell in the kitchen that we finally traced back to mildew behind the fridge. Gross!

But even with these few disappointments, it was a great trip! I’m sad it’s over.
 

 

 
Here’s a look at our “big catch” after the first night of crab hunting.
 

 

Life’s a Beach

It’s vacation time! And my clan has headed to the beach for the week. Our last trip to the beach was 3 years ago, before we were a family of four. Look at little Simon. Awwww, memories!

 

The hubs has done it again

This isn’t the first time I’ve bragged about my uber-talented husband (read here), and I can guarantee you it won’t be the last. This time he has designed some oh-so-sweet posters for a local music venue. And not just any music venue. It just so happens to be family owned.

My sister hosts house concerts in her backyard, using her very own Domino Hall as the backdrop. It’s a very intimate setting for watching local and national musicians perform. Alex (the hubs) decided this venue would serve as a great inspiration for some poster designs and a great way for his sister-in-law to promote her venue. And he was right. These posters won a gold medal at the 2011 DSVC show.

You will be able to purchase these on Etsy soon. But in the meantime, feel free to let me know if you are interested in owning one or more, and I will make it happen. Oh, and visit his website to see even more great work.