{Halloween} Spooky Decor

**I'm working on some Nate posts but thought I'd share this oldie (but not so goodie) in the mean time!**

Our fireplace and living room BEFORE... (emphasis on the BEFORE!)

I don't know what's more scary in this photo... the colors of the trim, fireplace, bricks, and wall (all from the previous homeowner) or the Halloween decorations we put up years ago.

I think this was from 2008 as a photo from Miss Lily's first Halloween showed a slightly different set up. 

This year didn't see much of this going on. We were too busy preparing for Little Man's arrival, working full time, and preparing for the sub. 2008 was completely different... no kids, just working and going to school (both full time). 

Maybe next year we'll decorate again as we'll be gearing up for Little Man's first birthday.

By the way, our fireplace now looks like this:

That's actually an old photo but the colors are all still the same. It's somewhat decorated for Fall and the furniture is moved around but I couldn't find a better shot that shows how I painted the bricks, surround, walls, trim, windows, etc. in this room to really make it a lot lighter. And by the way, the previous color choices were all made from the previous homeowner (same goes for the green couches). 

I do love the wood mirror with it's slightly concaved sides but some day it'll actually get hung up on the wall and not just sat on the fireplace. Our walls are plaster on brick, so it's hard for me to do it and I just haven't had Doug or my dad do it. I also love mercury glass, white milk glass (or similar white items with texture) and keeping things simple. Ignore the wood in the corner, it's for a growth chart that I still need to make for Lily (and now another one for Nate). Oh the to do list grows! 

{Living Room} Pillows and Patterns

Our living room is the first room you walk into and I found it incredibly boring every time. Lately it is used more of a dumping ground from daily activities or of things that need to find new homes, like 3 full garbage bags of Lily's clothes and random house hold items that I'm donating. It doesn't help that we don't actually spend time in there as just our family of three until someone comes over and we sit there on the couches. 

So, over the summer I decided that I wanted to add some more color and design to it. Nothing fancy, as I didn't want to jump into anything crazy (yet) but something that may tie it to the dining room that it's open to. Enter the pillows shown below. I have a blue patterned rug in the dining room and have been thinking about adding another patterned rug to the living room. I wasn't sure of random patterns but I knew I loved the blue and white of the dining room rug so I searched on Etsy and found these pillows. Aren't they great?! Your eye immediately goes to them now instead of the odd green couches (that we got with the house and are not replacing any time soon). I'm still debating on the rug but this helps. 

Some where in my house I hopefully still have the blue and white table runner that I had on our dining room table. I'm afraid I donated it but am hoping it'll show up at some time to add more blue to these two rooms. Both rooms have light blue curtains on the two bigger windows. There are two smaller windows, like the one shown above, that I left plain. 

I know it's a small step but I feel like this room is slowly getting better. Now to think of an area rug at some point (and pick a color) and add more pillows. I can't sew a straight line to save my life, plus I can't figure out my husband's grandmother's sewing machine. But maybe if I can find some fun fabric to stay with the blue and white theme, I can have my mother in law sew some pillows. She's fantastic at them! 

And just to show you what it looked like back in the day....

The below photo shows the room after I painted the ceiling, removed the wallpaper, primed where the wallpaper was, and before painting the walls, windows, and fireplace. 

The below photo shows the fireplace (that's not useable right now) decorated with stuff when we first moved in. The candles and candle holders were all used in our wedding, I painted the artwork in college and the photos are of our wedding and family. Everything else (wallpaper, colors, metal scrollwork) was all left over from the previous homeowner.

Can anyone say YUCK to those two above photos!?? Mustard, glazes on the wall, wallpaper, weirdly painted fireplace (the paint came off every time I dusted), and dark everything, plus so much more that is now gone! 

{Living Room} Progress

Pardon the crappy iPhone pic but that's what I have to work with right now..

 

Anyway, for those that know our house, you'll see a few things different. One is that we moved the big shelf unit (made by my dad when I was really young) from Lily's room to our living room. I wanted something else tall that would balance out the armoire that's sneaking in on the left side of this photo. The shelf is taller but narror and it helps a lot. It also frees up room in Lily's room. The stuff on the shelf isn't all permanent, but the bottom four shelves (two on each side) hold Lily's books and puzzles. You can see the purple bin that holds a lot of her little board books. I'll buy a nicer box some day but I'm working with what I have right now. I will say though that since we've moved all of the books into the living room, we have read a lot more. It's nice!

 

You can also see we started working on the gallery wall here. It starts with the large framed family piece (Doug's grandfather's item) and then we used what we had to fill in. It's not done but some have been hung since this photo.

 

I'm not fond of the green couch (there's also a loveseat and chair) but we definitely aren't going to replace any time soon. Maybe some day once these wear out. They're pretty comfy, although ugly, and I've even slept on these and it's nice.

{Home} Before Photos

At Lily's birthday party today (pics to come), I realized many people in our family had never seen the before photos of our house. One of my friends said that I should make a coffee table book. That would take some more time and finding the old photos of everything, which I'm hoping are on my old computer. But anyway... here are some photos from the house before I got my hands on it!

BEFORE - the hallway bath. Brick red ceiling, aqua blue walls, shell border around ceiling and cut out detail, pinkish tan painted trim, tile halfway up walls, wallpaper on ceiling.

BEFORE - old bath area in front of window was converted to shower area too (with the new "wall" to house shower pieces.

BEFORE - bathroom - circle medallions match those found in dining room (all cut out of larger wallpaper pieces).

BEFORE - columns in living room. Two tone with glaze.

BEFORE - living room into dining room (house is a mess while painting started). The living room had already been painted, dining room is still a dark red.

BEFORE - dining room side was solid brown with glued on decals.

BEFORE - living room - "antique" (according to previous homeowner), wallpaper (that's the sheet that was cut out for all borders and circle medalions), corner pieces from wallpaper, hand painted border (wallpaper), dark red (with black glaze) walls, brownish ceiling.

BEFORE - dining room - just another shot of the darkness and random details.

BEFORE - dining room - showing off the hand painted (NOT by me!) wallpaper border.

BEFORE - that's a lot of work - glad it didn't take much to remove it all!

BEFORE - dining room - wallpaper on trim. Why?!?!

BEFORE - door. The true before would show the old hardware, but we replaced that for a new lock and dead bolt within weeks of moving in. Security first people!

BEFORE - kitchen - OMG was this bad! And yes, those are grapes that are climbing up to the ceiling.

BEFORE - kitchen - oh the green ...

BEFORE - kitchen - up close - and in progress, the black is just a temporary fix until we can afford a true makeover

BEFORE - Lily's room - two closets, poop brown trim, stenciled gold medallions

BEFORE - Lily's room

BEFORE - Lily's room detail of the stencils on the walls

BEFORE - living room - dark brown trim, mustard walls (with glaze), wallpaper (hand painted again), two color door, "ornate" (?) switch cover, dark green curtains with tassels.

BEFORE - living room - wall paper on ceiling

BEFORE - living room

BEFORE - living room - trim on bottom and top of walls. Green thing with strings is the curtain and the tie back (that's looped up so I can start cleaning and removing wallpaper).

BEFORE - living room - window decorations

BEFORE - fireplace

BEFORE - living room - more wallpaper!

BEFORE - upstairs office (look at the belly!!!)

BEFORE - our garden area

BEFORE - was after - of garden area (and also pre-fence too)

BEFORE - upstairs - two different colors of trim, wood trim everywhere (instead of properly finishing drywall), wood paneling on vertical surfaces

BEFORE (kinda) - upstairs. This shows teh color, wood trim, stair carpet, brick walls that were on all four eaves

{Living Room} Fireplace

I am still looking for some missing photos but this fireplace used to be red painted brick, brown wood with gold dry brushed on top of the brown. I'll keep looking... for now, it's all white. Two coats of primer, three coats of paint. I'm doing one more to help even it up just some more!

EDITED... FOUND THE PICS... here ya go!

This photo was from a few years ago but it's how it's looked the whole time, with some minor details changed (candles normally sit in the fireplace).




And here it is as I painted the walls. My next job in this room (once the trim is all painted) will be the INSIDE of the fireplace. It's not a workable fireplace right now, so at some point I'd like to have someone look at it to see what it would take to fix it and also I'd like to paint with heat resistant paint on the inside (after a good cleaning!).

{Living Room} Progress

Wow, our house has undergone some changes recently! It's amazing what paint can do!!! 

If you're on Facebook, you've seen this photo, but I haven't blogged about it yet.

My dad was super helpful last week and once the walls were the new color, he knew I couldn't stand the brown chocolate windows. He couldn't stand them either! So he came and helped paint them. Well, he painted them while I painted the dining room. He also caulked the windows too. We don't use them because there's no screens for them, so he caulked them all up so we lose less air. Isn't that nice?

The one in the pic that's brown is actually now white. They all have two coats on them (I think) but will need another. The door is next. We're thinking this week will see that happen, but I'm not positive.

The Columns

Ugh... this is what I've stared at for the last 3 years when I'm in my living room. I have NO idea why I haven't done something about it before... but there have been other things on my mind since July 2007... like the upstairs remodel, our backyard, and of course, all things Lily!... so, of course my mind has been on many things (and that doesn't include working full time, going back to school to finish my teaching certificate, starting and continuing my master's degree in education, and so many other things.

But finally, I have gotten to this mess...






This shot shows the red (and more wallpaper!) in the dining room as it looks into the living room... but the above pic is the living room side (it's the gold side, the brown side was in the dining room).



Here's what it looks like without the glued on decals... they were NOT my style!


AND... drumroll please... it is primed!


The entire thing (both sides) is primed and I had started painting the first coat of semi-gloss trim paint when my parents asked me if I wanted a lunch break. So yes, I went out for lunch and then I got sleepy, took a nap, and haven't gotten back to the project. That's tomorrow's job!!!

Also on the agenda for tomorrow... to put the first coat of paint on the fireplace (yes, I primed it all today too!) and the second coat of trim paint on all the baseboards. I'll post more pics tomorrow of that!


Showing off at...

The Columns, in progress

So here are the "columns" I posted about earlier... Don't judge me by my clutter! I swear it was clean a week ago for Miss Lily's party! But this is what happens when you are in the process of painting one room (where two of those tables go) and then there's the mini fridge from your in-laws that was once your hubby's that needs to find a new home... preferably not in the middle of my dining room! And then there's the table full of junk, the couch full of stuff too, and my two shadows... Rocky, the cat, and Zoey, my pup! But focus on the woodwork... the DARK brown, the random spicy mustard color inside, the glued on crap decals. I tried finding a true before pic that would include both the wall color and the brown trim, but I couldn't (except in the background of a Christmas pic but it didn't show much). I'll keep looking! For now, here's the in progress pic!