A sense of accomplishment

Today, I decided to start my first painting project. My bathroom needed painting… I found the “perfect” white paint in the “oops” paint at Home Depot. If you don’t know about oops paint… a gallon for a low price of $5. I have a variety of paints for my house all from the oops paints. Check Lowes and Menards as well… if you are looking for a color, but not super picky about the shade, you can find some great colors. 🙂 I knew I wanted to paint my bathroom white from the day I closed. I think that a white bathroom is refreshing and the options I am left with are wonderful. I wanted to be able to have a variety of rugs and towels to add color to the room. If my wall color is white, I am not limited in the colors of rugs and towels.

Here is my starting point… a sort of creamy coffee color.

 

Midpoint… first coat…

Almost end point… a pretty white. The only thing I have left to do, take down the tape.

I do feel a sense of accomplishment, even if my bathroom is not 100% complete. Painting is a lot harder when doing it on ones own… especially when you have to paint around the toilet, sconces, mirrors is a small space. Right now, my rugs and towels are yellow… my other decor in my bathroom are ducks. Rubber ducks to be exact. The next thing I need to add to my bathroom is shelves for my ducks. Once I find the right ones. I will add a follow-up picture once my ducks have their own home. What have you accomplished lately?

My weekend in pictures… Things that made me happy

This weekend was a busy one, some of the best times from the weekend, I didn’t take pictures of… Friday night, I went to dinner with one of the coolest, strongest woman I know, didn’t take pictures. Saturday morning, had to get an oil change… during the oil change, my mom and I walked around the “French Hens Market” and then checked out the stores downtown. When that was done went out to my parents house and found a cute little tree frog in the garden. Then on to church and Cruise Night. Sunday morning, my parents headed up to my place to help me pick up a free stack of bricks. Two truck loads, loaded by hand. Did I mention that I have GREAT parents? I have no pictures from the bricks… because we were too busy moving the bricks to think about pictures. After moving the bricks, on to Home Depot… where there were no pictures taken either. Picked up some new plants, some hardware to hang some shelves, and some bug spray. Pictures from my DIY planter to come! 🙂 Check out the other pictures:

Car from the cruise night… I could see myself driving down the road, wind blowing through my hair.

Look at this little bug, check out the driver’s door…

check out the passenger’s side door… see the difference?  🙂 Love it! And the colors!

Awww the little tree frog!

Sign would look great in my bedroom!

Found in one of the downtown stores. I have an old lamp and the silk lampshade is falling apart. When I saw this, I thought what a great way to use something instead of adding it to the landfill. Watch for another DIY project to come!

Great words to live by!

Cute planter, Mom and I both liked. Looks like another DIY project in the works!

Still have a lot to do to get my house together, but things are slowly coming together both inside and out. Love the chance to get out and get ideas to do to my house.

Most Recent DIY Project

As a home owner, I am learning the joys of DIY projects. While this project isn’t done yet, I have made progress. Tomorrow it will be finished and installed. I have read enough articles about home improvements, one of the eye sores on my house was the front. There were old/tarnished/rusty brass house numbers, mailbox and lights.  Last weekend, I started the project by painting the numbers and mailbox. The lights had a lot more detail in having to play with electricity to take the lights down. I enlisted my dad’s help in taking down and he will be assisting with the reinstallation of the lights. (What a great man!)

Old Brass lights from front porch…

The rusty brass lights, glass removed for cleaning and painting.

The lights with the first paint coat…

I chose an oil rubbed bronze paint, the project took two coats. Can hardly wait to see the finished project installed. The numbers and the mailbox already look amazing, the lights will only add to the finished look. I will post the installed version. What DIY Project are you working on? A few of the other projects to come are painting my bedroom furniture (started sanding this weekend… way too muggy for that), I have painting various rooms of the house. Found my spare bedroom paint at Lowe’s oops paint for $5.00 🙂 Yeah Me! I am working on picking out other colors for other rooms. I also need to work on making the basement livable.

DIY Fairy Gardens

This weekend, my mom and I attended a class on building/creating Fairy Gardens. Blumen Gardens was offering a crafts and cocktails afternoon. Sounded like a great girls day out, garden stuff and drinks. So we headed out for our trip to Blumen Gardens… it was about 2 hours from my parents house. So I headed out early to their house and we started on our way. Upon our arrival, we had some time to walk around and see lots of great plants. So our class was about to get underway. We were given an empty box and some basic explanations. Next we would fill our box with dirt, and pick out plants for our fairy garden. Some of the people brought items from home, some picked out a lot of additional items to add to their gardens. My mom and I focused mainly on the plants and rocks. As we didn’t have a lot of ideas as to what we were doing. So my original fairy garden looked like this.

All this for $15 plus a watermelon mojito (really tasty) 🙂

However, today, as I was looking at the fairy garden, I wasn’t happy with it. It didn’t turn out how I wanted, and I had more ideas of what I could do. I actually created two fairy gardens from my original one.

New Fairy Garden #1 –  Using a bucket that I was going to plant in, this was the perfect plan for the bucket.

New Fairy Garden #2 – using the box we got at the class

This is a really fun craft/gardening idea… next is to add accessories. Hobby Lobby here I come. I think in the doll house sections we will find some cute stuff.

Red Light District… or…

I have been working on decorating and organizing the inside of my house, but I can’t help but think about the outside as well. My house is a white house, with a black front door and shutters. I want to refinish my front porch lights, house numbers and mail box (rusted brass), I would like to paint them black as well. My other thoughts are to have red flowers out in front. So far, I have a red hanging plant, I plan to add more as time and money permit. My other idea, takes me to my title. Once I have repainted the lights and have them back in place, I would like to find the perfect color bulb to the front and side doors. This idea came from friends who have their porch light a blue light. Wonderful for ease of directions, come to the house with the blue light.

My dilemma, what color to add to my porch. While red would make sense a wonderful accent to black and white… I don’t want the neighborhood to have  thoughts along the lines of my starting a brothel. 😉 Other choices I have seen: Orange, Yellow, Green, Purple, Blacklight and the blue.

With the red flowers which most likely won’t be seen when the porch light is on, what would your suggestion be for picking a light bulb? Because I don’t think I want people to think they are living near/in the red light district. Any suggestions?

Sepia Sunday

I took this picture during a garden walk in the Pullman Neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side. Loved this water feature. Now that I have a house I can start thinking about landscaping and the likes. Looking forward to finding and creating wonderful places and spaces in my yard. Hope to create something just as beautiful as this. Spring can’t come soon enough.

Wonderful Wordless Wednesday

Saturday 6 – Collections

Today I’m going to share the top 6 things I collect  and some collections I have seen that I think are great if I had the room.

1. Elephants – I have elephants of all shapes and sizes I just think that they are so beautiful and always seem so calm.

2. Corks – I save the corks from my wine bottles… don’t know what I am going to do with them, right now they are just being collected in jars (also something I collect but not talking about here). Some people collect and save the lables… I keep the corks. All of them, the plain ones, the pretty ones it doesn’t matter.

3. Gnomes – I have collected Gnomes since I was little… I don’t have a lot, but I have been finding more and more… maybe they are multipling on me.

4. Glasses – I have glasses from everywhere. I find a unique (to me) glass and I have to have it. I have a variety of pint glasses from all over, I have a variety of shapes of wine glasses, which I like because I don’t like all my wine glasses to look alike. Don’t have a lot of shot glasses, looks like a new collection to start 🙂

5. Ocean themed stuff – I love to sail – I love lighthouses and I love anything to do with the beach.

6. Animal Print Anything – As you all know I am working on buying a house. Once in my house, my plan is to have at least one animal print thing in every room. We will see what happens. I need more furniture with animal print, but that will have to wait.

Things that I have seen being collected that I like:

Antique Hand Mirrors – these were displayed all around a bigger mirror in the bathroom, the effect was really cool. Door Knockers, Fiestaware, Crosses, Pottery, Tea Cups, Old Fans, and Old Clocks.

What is your unique collection?