I need a little inspiration!

So, a couple of posts back, i showed you all this picture from our bedroom and i need a little help. My previous colors in this room were red/green/brown. I still like these colors, but i found this pack of fat quarters from JoAnns that really inspired me to go with a new color scheme. Mostly because all i really needed to do was replace the reds with sea colors. Here are the fabrics....

I am planning on painting the walls a "seascape" color of some sort. Maybe a shade lighter than this color swatch below because i don't want it too dark. I want color on the wall though because i plan to paint the headboard an heirloom white & antique it around the edges. I might even put a monogram on the center if the hubster will allow yet ANOTHER monogram in the house. He hates them & doesn't get why we need them! If i paint the headboard white, then i will do the same either with the existing dresser or buy two cheap ones off of Craigslist to do it to in order to have it all matchy matchy.
So here is where i need ideas! What can i do with these fabrics? I know the first & obvious answer is PILLOWS! But i can't sew. My sister said she would let me borrow her sewing maching & give me a quick run down on how to work it, but i am so intimidated. Does anyone have any other ideas? I thought of stapling them to small canvases & then arranging them together on the wall, but past that... i got nothing! Help! If you have any ideas... leave me a comment (even if you don't ordinarily do that... ahem... MOM!)

Tuckered out....

Ummm, Yeah! He fell asleep like this in the car & i couldn't resist the shot....

From Brass to Class....

I woke up this morning & decided that i was going to hit the Goodwill. I had not been to the Goodwill in years even though there is one about 5 minutes away from us! I have seen on several blogs i have been following that they take old, brassy lamps & completely spruce them up with a good coat of spray paint (what else, right??)

In no time, i spotted these "beauties".... and prompty decided they would work. I needed one to put on the newly refurbished side table in the living room and i needed 2 matching ones for the nightstands in our bedroom. I have several lamps in the house already, but none of them are what i needed or big enough, matched well enough etc. So "new" ones it was. And at $4 a pop, i liked the idea even better!!

Here they are before i got started on them. They all three look very similar, but the two on the left have a matching center "swirl" on them. The one on the right does not & is a tad bit taller.
This will be the one in the living room.... and i spray painted it "brushed nickel"....And the two like this are going in the bedroom.... and they were painted "oil rubbed bronze"...Here they are in "process".....Of course, while i was doing this, Eli was napping & Jackson was at school. But that still left the most active one of all....
But i have to admit... he was a good little boy while i worked in the garage. He stayed right on the (nasty, i'll admit) rug in the garage while i worked. He wasn't on a leash & stayed right there & out of trouble (he had plenty of blown in leaves to keep him occupied, i guess!). Anyway.. back to the projects at hand!! Here is the taller one for the living room. The table it is sitting on, i finished on Saturday. It was a $10 find on craigslist that was in perfectly good shape as it was ( a cherry finish) aside from a few stripped spots on the top, but i had other plans. I painted it to match the bookcase i finished the weekend before. So now it is Randy's new side table & it has a pretty new lamp on top! yay!

And the ones for the bedroom?? Check them out!
I am officially a grown woman... i have matching lamps in my bedroom... it only took 30 years! Ha!

My newest obsession

Before we moved into our new house, i knew there were certain things i wanted differently in terms of furniture. I wanted a lot of new furniture but wasn't willing to pay full price for something new. So over the last month or so, i have slowly worked my way up to refinishing a few peices of furniture! I started with something i already had.... our nightstand. I sanded, primed, then painted it a pretty light green from leftover paint we had from painting our old kitchen. Then i sanded the edges & went back over it with a quick rub of some stain we already had. Then i decided i needed another nightstand. So i got a cheap $25 nightstand off of craigslist & started all over doing the exact same thing to it. Plus i added a layer of polyurethane on top to protect it. (i took no pictures of these, can you believe that?)

Anyway, then i started searching Craigslist again for several things i have been wanting... side tables & some sort of storage space in the living room. Our TV is now in an alcove so i needed a place to store all the DVD's etc out of sight as well as some shelving space for books/pictures. I stumbled across this bookshelf (actual bookshelves aren't pictured) for $75, but i talked the guy down to $50. It was pretty beat up & even had a few hand cut holes in the back of the unit where the previous owner apparently wanted to plug in something. It also had a built in light up top that we removed.Over the course of a long weekend, i turned it into this..... I primed, sprayed 2 coats of Rustoleum paint in Black Satin & then sanded the edges with 80 grit sandpaper. Then i went back over those exposed edges with Ralph Lauren Glaze tinted to "smoke" color (got at Home Depot). Don't think i got all this on my own. I have been following a blog for awhile called www.shanty2chic.blogspot.com that has lots of great information!

I haven't added any hardware back on because i haven't decided just what i want yet. In this photo you can also see those holes pretty well. I did cut down a small peice of black scrapbooking paper to cover it up from the back of the unit. I was going to make a whole new backing, but decided that 1) i didn't want to put that effort into it right now 2) the books will most likely cover most of that up and 3) i might actually want those holes some time myself! So i just went with the paper method!
Here she is all set up in the living room! And i did it all with out any help! I am so proud of myself!
And i already have another project primed in the garage ready for a first coat of spray paint.... stay tuned!

Paddle Up!

Oh Eli! He is a funny kid. He says funny things & has quite the knack for re-enacting things he sees from others. And apparently that goes for his shows he watches too. Good thing he only watches preschool shows! Anywho, you all know that he loves the Backyardigans. Thankfully he has added a few others to his repertoire of shows, but still loves them too. There is a specific episode on one of his DVD's that is called "Blazing Paddles." The story line is all about how the characters have to challenge Cowboy Pablo to ping pong matches in order to win back Sheriff Uniqua's paddle (because she WAS the best at ping pong before Cowboy Pablo waltzed into town....) Instead of winning the paddle back, they all lose their paddle to Pablo instead until the end when of course Sheriff Uniqua practices & wins them all back from Cowboy Pablo.

Well, A few weeks ago, Eli took a small black ball from the playroom & got a large peice of train track from the GeoTrax set. What do you think he did with it?? Starting use the track peice as a "bat" & ball or so i thought.
When i asked him if he was playing baseball, he promptly told me "No. Dese are paaddouls & i am Pablo." Translation:
"No, these are paddles and i am pablo." Here he is in action....He was so proud of himself & played this game forever! But for the record.... Pablo didn't store his paddle away in the same place as Eli...... Pablo actually had a holster..... but i guess you use whatcha got, right??

Multi-tasking... with the new one....

I have been in a scrapbooking mood for several weeks. My friend Meredith came over on New Years day & we scrapped all afternoon & late into the night. Since i decided to rearrange my office to make room for both her scrap table & mine, i decided that all that work was worth just leaving my stuff out & set up for awhile. I usually keep my table and all my scrap supplies set up in the walk in closet in that room, but that wouldn't have been conducive to conversation if she was out in the room & i was in the closet. So i moved it out & had to rearrange all the furniture in there to make it all work. Long story short... since i was still in my mode, the stuff was staying out for awhile, & I really wanted to finish my Disney album, i thought i would test a theory over the next few weeks..... multitasking with the office. It was scary but had the potential to be worth trying it out...

Here's what my test run looked like... Jackson on his little table in there with me, working on his lego's, and Zack on his "bed" napping. Can you believe it?? I can hardly believe it myself. The key is to get the dog worn out first. Then let him get sleepy & sack out. If you skip this step then when one of the kids walks in to play Lego's, all he wants to do is play with them or eat the fallen Lego's!
And of course, once he wakes back up... scrappin' time is over! But i have to tell you, the boys have enjoyed being allowed in the office to "work" with me! It's been fun!

The Many Faces of Zack

Zack gets cuter & cuter every day! He also gets more mischevious by the day as well... but that is for another post! He has such expressions & i just love that!His "What are you lookin' at?" face...Must you keep taking my picture?
He's trying soooo hard to be good....
And before he knows it, he drifts off to sleep. If only he would sleep a little more & jump/nip/chew a little less! But that's okay, he's still learning & we love him anyway (well most of us do!!)

Eerie!

So along with the purchase of this new house, we inherited vultures. Yep, that's right. VULTURES. What gives?? At first, they would just hang out in the big trees in the wooded part of our lot... WAY in the back of the woods, but because they were high up, we could see & watch them. But they are getting more & more comfortable with our lot apparently because when i took Zack out this morning, i looked up & this is what i saw in our tree!!
Yikes! There were actually 11 of them at one time in this tree in our back yard! I'm talking about within our fenced yard! They just give me the creeps... i know they do good and all, but they just make me shiver!
When we tap on the windows... they spread their wings out & watch..... then they settle back down again. Ugh! Go away!!!

raingutter bookshelves....

So, i have a little addiction.... that is... i read a LOT of craft blogs. I can't help myself- they give me lots of inspiration to try new things. And one of those new ideas was the idea of these raingutter bookshelves. You just take a vinyl rain gutter (they come in 10ft sections at Lowes) and cut it down with a hacksaw.... place endcaps on either end & attach to the wall with gutter brackets. Viola! You have a great bookshelf that holds lots of books in a fashion that encourages children to read because they can see the titles. We don't need encouragement over here, because my boys already love to read, but i had been wanting a bookshelf that displayed books in this manner. And i couldn't believe how easy & cheap these were! We put a 5 ft section in the playroom in our "quiet reading area" and a 2.5 ft section in each of the boys rooms because they take books to bed every night.....They are thrilled... and so am i because all three shelves came from one $6 gutter! (granted, the endcaps and brackets were $2.50 a peice, but it was still a frugal fix!!)

If you want step by step directions... visit here.....

I love this kid....

I tell ya... this kid... he fills my heart up. He is growing up so fast and it makes me sad on one note & proud on the other. He can go from a handsome, "i want to look handsome" kid, to a goof off in about a split second....
He is learning so much these days. He astonishes me! He's hit 2 major milestones in one month... the tooth loss and the shoe tying & that just makes me pause & wonder where the time is going? I just birthed this child yesterday, right? And his birthday is right around the corner. MY child will be SIX, yes, SIX years old in couple of weeks. And i tell you, i may have talked a lot about how stubborn he is... but he is just as sweet. He is brave, tenacious, imaginative, loving, caring, & did i mention, handsome?? Stubbornness included... i wouldn't trade these last six years with my Jackson for the world!

Tooth Fairy Makes an Appearance!

This past weekend, Jackson told us his tooth hurt. At first we didn't understand the problem.... then it dawned on us... he had a loose tooth!!!! This is a first for our house! So today, he decided it was time for Daddy to help him pull it...
Jackson's "before" smile....Daddy, helping it along.... (makes me queasy!!)
So proud! You lost a tooth!!!!!!
Checking himself out in the mirror....
The "after" smile.... little snaggle tooth!
yuck... the tooth.... it's amazing how much is under that gum...
putting it in his tooth fairy pillow for tonight...
He decided he wanted the pillow in his new shelf... so it was obvious to the tooth fairy where it was waiting....