This past weekend, Scott's mom came into town for a short "hello" visit.  It was great, but like all trips, the end came way too fast.  I asked Jeanette for some help in my living room.  I had the 2 chairs I bought from Target and my 2 project wing back chairs, but hadn't been able to put this look together.  We spent all day Sunday trying to find the right accessories like rugs, end tables and lamps to hopefully make the space work. 

We had a really good game plan and things were coming along nicely.  Until I went to World Market.  The second I went in the door, I knew why the living room wasn't visually working in my space.  I had the wrong chairs.  In fact, I really didn't want 4 chairs, but wanted a couch/love seat and 2 chairs. 

Meet Harper. 

I don't know if I've ever loved a piece of furniture like I've loved this couch.  And I knew the second I saw it, I had to have it.  All of a sudden my room started coming together!

I Just Found...

I think I may have found something that makes me more excited then I have been in a long time.

I need to back up a little bit.  Awhile back, I did a post about some granite transformation paint that I was going to try in the upstairs guest bathroom.  The bathroom is rarely used and I figured that it would be an inexpensive way to update the room.  I had plans to have Scotty lay some economical tile down there, change some fixtures, and call it good.  Unfortunately, Scotty has requested that I find some projects that don't require him to do everything.  So alas, I was on to finding an alternative for the bathroom floor.  I've been forbidden from using power tools.  It's a house rule.  And I haven't ever earned the ban.  But whatever.  So I was Googling the other day and heard about this vinyl wood flooring.  Now I LOVE wood floors.  I prefer them over any other types, especially dark and rustic ones (like we laid in our downstairs).  The big rule is to never put laminate in bathrooms so I never even thought of wood in there.  Some GENIUS out there created vinyl wood plank flooring.  It's a peel and stick tile that you lay right over your current floor.  I am seriously stopping at Home Depot on the way home to pick up a box of this stuff.

http://agracefull-life.blogspot.com/p/fave-projects.html

Would you even believe me that the picture above is vinyl and not actual wood?  How unbelievably cool.  I'm not too worried about longevity of the product, either, because truly, the bathroom only gets used when we have people in from out of town.  The reviews I'm reading do appear to say that the product holds up well, but that is just an added bonus if it does happen.

I found this great product at Home Depot that I can't wait to see in person.  And the grand total it will cost to do the floor? About $50.  Can't beat that!

Art on the Walls

This afternoon, I dedicated a half hour to getting some art hung on the walls.   I started in the guest bedroom.  I found these great, vintage skiing posters on eBay and thought they'd be perfect in the room.

Each of the posters is a special place to Scott and I.  One is from Sun Valley, Idaho where we were married and the other is Stevens Pass, Washington where we did the majority of our riding and had our first date.  We are still looking for Mt. Baker, Washington where Scott grew up and Breckenridge or Keystone, Colorado, which are our new mountains.

I also did some art re-arranging.  I had this piece hanging in our family room, but really didn't love it there.  I moved it to the upstairs hallway and look it much more now that I don't have to look at it constantly. 

In it's place I hung 2 of the 4 animals canvases.  I still have to make 1 each for Chewy and Baker.  Once I do, I'll hang them above the 2 that are already there, making a square.

Maybe tomorrow I'll actually do some of the work I had intentions of doing today. :-)

Snow!

We woke up this morning to our first snow of the season! It was just a dusting and nothing exciting at all.  I didn't take a picture at all, but here is one I found on the news website that looked like my back porch.

It looks like it is time to bring the patio furniture in!  Oh but wait. Maybe it's not!  It looks like we are back up to 70 on Monday.  Only in Denver will you see swings like that!

I've decided that this weekend is an all work, no fun weekend.  I've been slacking on finishing up some small projects.  The small (but seemingly huge) project that I keep avoiding MOST is finishing our banister.  The whole thing is primed and just needs it's paint and polyurethane to be completed.  After that (or while coats are drying) I'm going to finish painting the 3rd guest bedroom.  We are leaving that room blank minus some paint to use when we need the room for blow up beds.

Hopefully my camera and I will get some fun shots this weekend to share early next week.  Happy Friday!

New Chairs

The living room chairs were delivered Thursday and I put one together last night and the other this morning.  I decided to wait over night to make sure before I took the time to assemble the second one.

I've decided I love them! And I got check off approval by my assistant house decorators.

Before:

 

I'm not sure where Snuffers got the dog toy from...

After:



From HERE

We also finished the upholstery on the dining room chairs.  I absolutely love how they turned out. 

 

Cost breakdown for chairs:

Chairs - $41 from Craigslist

Paint & Primer - already had leftover from refinishing the buffet

Fabric - $12 from Fabric.com

Total per chair: $13.25

 

I realized the last picture of the gallery wall really wasn't that good.  The light was on in the dining room (ghetto 1990's brass fixture) and it was creating shapes all over the picture.  Here is a replacement picture.

 

And here are some lovely picture of 2 of the children. Kaya is impossible to take pictures of! She is so scared of cameras. I may have tempted her to get up on her hind legs with a Kong toy filled with peanut butter. But only maybe.

 



 

   

You can see the haze in Kaya's eyes.  The vet said she is slowly going blind.  Poor little adorable (old) girl.



 

 



 



New Camera?

Yes, I do mean a new one.  About a week ago Scott brought home a camera that a friend of his at work was upgrading from.  I loved it, but realized it wasn't the right camera for me.  It was about 6 years old and while it had everything I needed, it had been dropped and I worried about it's longevity.

Fast forward a few days, we discovered there is a camera store by our house going out of business.  We decided that if they had the camera I wanted, we'd buy it.  If not, we'd return the one I had been using and wait until another date to buy my "dream" camera.  I'm telling you, it had to be fate.  We walk into the store and they only have 1.  They had two cameras that were body only of the model I wanted, but I decided I liked the kit lens the bundle came with.

We didn't buy it right that moment because I wanted to actually think about the decision.  I didn't expect the camera to be there, so I was caught slightly off guard.  I also wanted to make sure their price was in fact fantastic.

Turns out, it was.  But even better, the prices dropped the next morning.  I went running up there on my lunch and purchased this bad boy.  I absolutely LOVE him.  Love, love, LOVE.  It is even BETTER than the XSI I was using.  And what's even better is we got a slamming deal on him!

Canon Rebel T3i

And just for some random fun, Baker has been home almost 2 weeks.  This is his new favorite hobby.

Cute, right?  Only not so much.  He drips ALL over the floor.

Gallery Wall

Most of the weekend I spent dying from accidental gluten intake.  Let me just tell you, if I had any temptation of ever wanting to cheat, I am completely over that now.  Worst. Pain. Ever.  Ok, probably not EVER.  But it really did suck.  It was about 3 days of miserable-ness.  On Sunday, I was finally feeling like doing something somewhat productive.  I worked for awhile on stripping the buffet.  That is turning into quite a process.  I am now on to the legs and other curvy parts which is much harder to scrape then the flat surfaces.

Other exciting news - we hung our gallery wall! We had a bunch of random frames we've collected over the years that we wanted something to do with.  We don't really have any surfaces to put frames on, so we decided to make a collage, gallery wall.  A lot of the frames are empty still, but here is a general idea of what we've done:

Templeton (the deer) is my favorite part!   And the ampersand.  I have a slight addiction to ampersands.  We also (finally) reupholstered the chairs.  We had the fabric and the seats all ready to go but hadn't got around to them.  I realized that the picture of the completed chair is on the other camera! Boo!  I will post those soon.  I LOVE them. 

I ordered some living room chairs (the floral ones won!) and will get those delivered on Thursday.  After that, it's on to couch shopping for the living room.  It feels so good to finally have some rooms coming together!

PS - Meaghan Dunklee - do you see those empty frames? FIX IT!!  To anyone awesome out there reading my blog, go check out my friend's side business - Ex Libris Journals and Ex Libris Paper Designs.