New Lamps for the Master Bedroom

Happy Monday everyone! Hope y'all had a wonderful weekend. Our weekend was jam-packed with birthdays and watching my niece's cheer-leading competition. They won 2nd place!! Congratulations girls!!
So after I painted the entryway/foyer last week I decided it was time to tackle the master bedroom. This room needs A LOT of attention such as paint on the walls, paint on the furniture, lighting, furniture, drapes, etc, etc. I've been searching for new lamps for the side tables for a while and either can't find what I'm looking for or it's more than I'm willing to spend. So when I took the kiddos to Home Depot to get paint samples, we ran through lighting just to see what they had. I wasn't expecting much but to my surprise they had the the most perfect lamp(s) for the master bedroom AND they were on Clearance for half off! So I asked the very nice and very old man (not being mean just giving you some visual here) working there if they had two because I only saw the one on display. So he gets out his handy dandy little computer thingy and tells me that it shows they have 3!

WINNING!

So he proceeds to look for them and he looks, and he looks and he cannot locate them anywhere.

Not WINNING.

So he looks at his little handy dandy little computer thingy again tells me there is 1 at one store like 40 miles away and another one another 40 miles away. So I tell him "thanks for checking" and decided they just weren't meant to be. Bummer. So we headed over to the garden area so my daughter could look at the flowers (she LOVES flowers) and we're there for about 10 minutes when I hear a man yelling "ma'am!", Ma'am"!, MA'AM"! I look up and he's waving his arms at me and yells across the garden center "I FOUND THEM!". I was so happy I almost cried. Not really but seriously I couldn't stop smiling!!!He said he had been looking allover the store for me and when he couldn't find me he decided to look in the garden area since that's where most woman like to shop. I thought that was cute. I could tell he was happy he found them, I think he knew he made my day. Maybe he could adopt me as his granddaughter or something and help me find more amazing deals at Home Depot. Or maybe his great-granddaughter since I'm so young and all. ;)

Foyer Makeover

Sorry I've been MIA lately but we had a nasty cold sweep through our home last week plus we were busy planning a garage sale that we held on Saturday. Which by the way we sold a ton of stuff thank-you-very-much. And made a little cash at the same time! Let's just say we made enough money to go out to dinner and buy the kids new shoes! I know that doesn't sound like much but do you know how much it costs for a family of 5 to go out to a nice restaurant AND buy shoes? It's an arm and leg these days and let's not even talk about the cost of the gas to get there!
Oh and we bought paint for this little project.........This is my foyer painted Camelback by SW. It's been this color like forever and I'm soooo over it! I really really wanted a pretty Teal color in this space but after testing the color on the wall I could tell it was going to totally clash with my lime green walls in the playroom which is to the left when you first walk in. So I played it safe with a warm gray. That way I can add in pops of color to compliment the lime green in the playroom.Finding the perfect gray is so hard. It either has a green, lavender or blue tint and I didn't want any of those colors. I wanted a neutral that went with everything and I finally found it.

Repose Gray by Sherwin Williams.

I know it's a little hard to tell in these photos but it's really pretty and soothing and goes with everything. Mission Accomplished!

Closeups of the photos on the table. My sweet baby girl.

And my sweet baby boys.

Next on the list... scrape the popcorn ceilings! Sounds like so much fun! Not.

Candy Pink Chandelier

This chandelier is original to the house and hung in the formal dining room that we hardly used. We recently turned our formal dining room into a smaller version of Toys R Us.
You see, when you have twins, their toys have twins, and their diapers have twins and all of the giant baby gear items like swingers, bouncers and high chairs have twins. And then one day you wake up and realize that your house is overrun by baby stuff times 2. Not to mention that we have a four year old who likes to play with things like My Little Pony and Barbie that come with tiny little parts and lots of them and you know it's only going to get worse as they get older so you decide to turn your hardly-ever-used dining room into playroom to house all the stuff. (Playroom post coming soon) So that left us with a chandelier hanging in our playroom for about a year. It was a fancy playroom. Not. For some reason it didn't go very well with lime green walls and toys. So my husband took it down, removed all the crystals and painted it with Candy Pink spray paint by Rust-Oleum.

He also bought new white plastic thingies that look like candles (what are those called?) and hung it in our daughter's room. She loves it and thinks it's so fancy! I love it because it was practically free since we already had the paint and those plastic sleeve thingies are super cheap. I also love it because it allowed us to move her ceiling fan to the playroom where it will be used more often since we spend a lot of time in there.

Ahhh, look at me being all frugal and stuff.
I'm linking up to these parties...

Signs of Spring

I'm so over winter. Seriously, I've been over winter since January and now that it's been in the 70's here in Texas, I am officially calling it SPRING! Besides, when you start to see the little green buds of your favorite plant pop through the soil, it's got to be spring!

(Hey buddy (pun intended), glad to see you made it through the single digits we had 2 weeks ago.)

I LOVE spring in Texas, the weather is warm, the kids can play outside, you can wear shorts and sandals and start on your summer tan.Lu on the crazy slide at the park.

The boys were more interested in the rocks than the playground.

This was the temp inside the house. In February!! Awesome.

And this is what I was drinking outside on the patio!! A margarita with salt, yes please!!!

Have you seen any signs of spring yet?

12th Wedding Anniversary

We went to dinner last night to celebrate our 12th wedding anniversary. It's actually on Valentine's Day but we usually wait a few days before going out so we can miss the crowds. We went to a local and very casual Italian restaurant and it was delicious! Here's a picture of us and the kiddos before heading out to dinner. It's nearly impossible to get a picture of five people without someone having their eyes closed or a kid with a finger up their nose so I thought this turned out pretty good!
Happy Anniversary sweetie! Love you lots!!!!
~Beth

Kitchen Update

We started painting the kitchen cabinets a couple of weeks ago and I really thought we would be done by now but we're only halfway through this humongous project. And that's partly because my husband got involved and well, he's kinda a perfectionist. I say that with the utmost respect and love, honestly. I usually take the "oh it's good enough" approach to doing things and he's the opposite. He makes my projects look REALLY good. My approach to painting the cabinets was to paint them. His approach is to caulk and fill every seam, crack, hole, dent, etc so when we paint it looks all flawless and crap. See the caulk in the cracks? So that triples the time it takes to get things done. But, like I said, he makes it look really goooood!

We thought we would go ahead and get a couple of bids for new cabinet doors because after we took off the cabinet doors, I decided I wanted ALL new pretty door fronts. So after the bids came back and we picked our jaws off the floor, we decided to only do glass door fronts on the cabinets next to the sink since those are the ones you see when you first walk into the kitchen. The bids weren't that high but when you're originally budgeting for paint and hardware only it kinda seemed like a lot of money. And I would really like to continue being a stay-at-home mom! Know what I'm sayin'. Besides, we can always get new doors later when the tree out back starts growing Benjamins.So to get the cabinets finished I've decided to set a deadline so I can get 'er done and get my kitchen back and that deadline folks is March 1st! I work well under pressure which means I'll probably be up all night on Feb. 28! Wish me luck!

Any projects you've started lately and just can't seem to get finished??

Home Goals for 2011: Hall Bath

I am super excited about redoing the hall bath because it's the second most used room in the house next to the kitchen. This is the bathroom my husband uses and we use it to bathe all 3 kids AND it's the bathroom that all our guests use.
Here's what the bathroom looked like when we moved in. Like my flower arrangement? I did that on moving day. "Must put dried floral arrangement in the hall bath STAT!" Maybe I thought it would distract our guests from the ugliness of the wallpaper?
This is what it looks like now. I will be moving that cross to a more appropriate place first thing in the morning! Not good.
Anyway, here's the view of the potty. so gross! Not sure why I didn't put the seat down when I took the picture but it definitely makes for a better before shot. The first thing we did was tear off the wallpaper, texture and paint! I don't have an after pic of the first paint job but it was blue. It was supposed to be Robin's Egg Blue but it was gag-me-with-a-spoon blue like hospital scrubs blue or cheap blow-up swimming pool blue. So about 2 years later we painted it a neutral tan that I still like today. Surprising, I know!
We also, installed ceramic tile, a new pee-stain free toilet seat, removed the hanging chain light fixtures and replaced all the bronze hardware with brushed nickel knobs and pulls. And we removed the louver doors and framed in the doorway to make it feel more open.
Here's a crappy picture of the color and a mess of our towels. The first thing we need to do here is "Towel Management". There are a lot of people that use this bathroom so we need to figure out a better system with wet towels because obviously this towel bar isn't doing the trick. So that's first on the list.
Second is a new counter top and sink. The counter top is white with gold flakes sort of like Goldschlager but not as tasty. Or fun.
I bet when they put this in they thought they were all fancy with their new gold flakey countertop. So I've been shopping around and I think I might be able to get a nice solid piece with an integrated sink without having to sell my first born. Yay! Or should I say "yeeehawww!". Because y'all know that's how we talk down here. Not.
Anyway, I would also like to paint the cabinet black and frame the mirror just like Kate did here.
Isn't Kate freakin' awesome! Go over and tell her "howdy" for me. And then come right back, OK? Go ahead I'll wait.