My $6.99 light fixture

Our house was built in 1999 so, it definatley has it's little things about it that feels "1999." This was one of those things: the big, flouresent light box over my kitchen island.

Within the past few months I have started to really not like it too much. It works, there's nothing wrong with it, it's just not too hip. So, on one of my many trips to Salvation Army I found this beauty:

It was sooo pretty, but one of the globes were cracked. So, I almost didn't buy it. I stood there forever and tried to decide whether or not to get it. It was priced at $8.99, which was still awesome, but I talked the manager down to $6.99. I know, not much difference but I would rather be out $6.99 than $8.99 if it didn't work, right? I know, I'm cheap. But I got it home and that weekend we put it up to see if it would work, AND....

It does!!!

Oh, I just love it so much! That one globe is still cracked but you can almost not even tell unless you really look at it. One day I'll replace it but for now I'm just enjoying this really sweet deal!

Hello Again!

Ok, I know that it has been a LONG time since I posted anything on this thing but I'm back for the moment to update you with some thoughts I've had during my hiatus. As a mom, I think the number 1 hardest thing about life right now is simply finding balance. I feel like I have a million things to do each day and there is not enough time in the day to do them. And I don't even work! So, I really don't know how full time working moms do it. I am just so very blessed to be able to stay at home with the kids and have my husband provide completely. But at the end of the day I still sometimes have the "mom guilt," like did I spend enough quality time with everyone today? Did Ethan watch too much TV? Did Emily help out too much today? Did Eli eat enough healthy foods? And the list goes on. It really is a task to balance everything out, and I think sometimes in my head, I plan out what my day is going to be like i.e. exercise, breakfast, shower, clean house, spend time with kids, lunch, run errands, laundry, dishes, dinner, read from Bible,spend time w/ hubby and then bedtime. And it is so funny it never ends up like that. And at first, meaning about the time Eli came, I would get so frustrated that I didn't do all of this every. single. day. If I got things done that would mean that I didn't get much time with the kids that day. And If I did get good quality time with the kids I didn't get anything done. Well, I am really working hard on this. If I could just LET GO of all of the feelings of having to be that "super mom" type figure I would really just learn to enjoy life and enjoy my family. So what if there's toys everywhere, my bed is not made, the kitchen is dirty, my laundry room is half painted, and I still have a some baby weight to loose? My kids aren't going to grow up and remember how much dirty laundry we always had or that there was always dirty dishes laying around. They are going to remember that their mom cooked for them all the time, instead of running threw a drive threw every night, and they are going to remember during the summer playing all day and swimming and just really enjoying the time out of school. So, I need to get a grip. I DO NOT have to do everything everyday. And everything DOES NOT have to be perfect all of the time. With that being said, that is why I have not updated my blog in a while. (This is going somewhere, I promise) When I first started it, I felt like I needed to constantly be updating it and getting hits where I could add ads and eventually be making a little (and I do mean little) amount of money off it. But I just don't think that is the plan anymore. The plan now is to update it when I can and not stress about it. To take life one day at a time and enjoy every. single. moment. My babies are way too precious to deserve anything less than ALL of me.

The Breakfast Room Remodel

Ok, so last week I said I was going to post about our new breakfast room re-do that we did while we re-did the kitchen. Well, I finally got a chance to sit down and get some of the pictures together. Here is a before picture of our brown striped breakfast area:

Nice, huh? Well, we painted over the stripes just like in the kitchen area with SW Repose Grey and SW Black Fox, added some of my goodwill white plate collection to an empty wall, built some Ballad Designs inspired shelves, and went curtain shopping. After all of that here it is now:

Here are the shelves I built on the other wall that you can't see:

You can find out how to build these HERE. It was very easy, with my husbands help, of course! I actually had everything laying around in the garage and back yard, so it cost NOTHING! Then I just decorated with my collection of stuff from goodwill, hobby lobby, and my jute wrapped vase. I am excited that I can decorate these according to the season or holiday it is too. Cute!  

Here they are before I decorated them:

And once again here are the ugly stripes....

And here is our breakfast room now...

 And yes, I know the plates look like a smiley face, my daughter pointed that out to me. I still need to fix it but other than that I love my new breakfast room and kitchen. We were so blessed to be able to do this project on a tight budget. All it took was a little creativity, inspiration, and an ice storm that had us stuck in the house for a week. Hope you love it as much as I do!

Steph

Kitchen Makeover

I am so excited this project. This is by far the biggest one that we have done so far, and most expensive (but not really) It has really changed the whole feel of our home. When we first moved in, the walls were a light yellow up top and a dark red on the bottom with birdhouses everywhere. The kitchen was the first thing that had to go and ended up being the only thing that we re-did, until now. When we decided to change the yellow and red I went with a striped brown/ tan look. And now after seeing how it looks now, I ask myself what was I thinking? At the time I thought it was cute, but apparently it never was. So, a couple of months ago we decided to update our kitchen to 2011 from 1999, when our house was built. Here some before pictures:

Now I took these pictures right as we were starting the makeover. Our cabinets had the cheapo laminate, sticky, glued on stuff when we moved in. All we did to that was just peel it off. It wasn't hard at all! Once you started peeling most of the rest of it would come off too. Then we took off all of our brass (yuck!) door handles. Then we used Sherwin Williams Plum Mahogany stain to stain all of our cabinets. This was not a fast process, but it was worth it. Next, we added beadboard around our backsplash. My husband actually got the beadboard at half off at Lowes because it had a few flaws in it, that we could just cut around. Heres the beadboard backsplash:

We also stained the wood strip that goes around the bottom of our countertops. It really stuck out like a sore thumb before, it was the only thing to do to blend it in. My husband bought some new, silver door handles for $1 each too! Just that makes a big difference. The brass ones screamed late 90's. Then, we painted over the stripes. I was soooo glad to see them go. I decided on grey this time. I just LOVE grey, such a neutral that will make any kind of accessory color pop. The top is Sherwin Williams Repose Grey and the bottom is also Sherwin Williams Black Fox. I really, really love how this turned out. I will show you some more before and afters and soon I will reveal the breakfast room makeover that came along with this project. I am so in love with it! But for now heres the rest of the kitchen: 

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The Eli Tree

      It feels like forever since I've been on here now. It seems like everyone in our family has been sick for the past couple of weeks, it started with the stomach bug and then eventually turned into fevers and runny noses. Aggh! So, with that being said I have not had much time to do any blogging but I have had time to do a few projects around the house. I've been dying to show you all of the little things that I have done.

This is the little project that I did in my youngest son's room. He really didn't have too much of a room or nursery until Christmas this past year because lack of money and I just didn't really know what I wanted to do. I love blue and brown together so I did decide to do his nursery in a blue/ brown kind of theme but we just didn't have the money for furniture. So, he slept in a pack-n-play until he was nine months old. Poor little guy. But after Christmas he got a crib, dresser, and a toy storage cubby. It really started coming together but there was a big, empty wall still. I thought about moving our armoire up there but that plan kinda bombed when we couldn't move the armoire up the stairs. It was soooo heavy! So, I decided to paint a tree mural for him and it was 10x cheaper than buying a big piece of furniture to fit that wall. It was actually free!

Here is the empty wall before:

I started by drawing the outline of a tree with a pencil. I messed up a lot but eventually, it was the way I wanted it.

Then I outlined the outside of the tree with a fine tip artists brush and some dark brown acrylic craft paint.

After I did that I stole a couple of polka dot stickers from my daughters room that were the perfect size for the circles I wanted for the leaves. I outlined them with a pencil and got to painting. This time I used some left over green paint from my other sons nursery.

And a couple of days later, it was done! I'm actually pretty proud of it. It might've been the easiest and cheapest project I've ever done and it really added a lot of personality to my little bears room. Hope you like it!