little projects need a little advice!

So here are some snapshots of some things going on at my house right now...some things I need a little advice on! Will you help me out?!

Here's the first thing. It's the window frame I bought at the Junk Jubilee sale...I had been wanting one for sooo long, and had actually found a really cute one at a super cute store near my house called A Kinder Touch. They have awesome stuff that's priced decently (which can be hard to find with antiques/vintage stuff!). Although I loved the frame I bought there, I ended up giving it to someone else that would love it too...someone I love very much...mom! She had just re-done her kitchen and she had been wanting a window frame to go along with the twig wreath I had given her another time. Well, it was worth giving away because she loved it and it looks perfect with the wreath against her new kitchen walls (I will have to share a pic sometime). Ever since then though, my heart has been pining for my own window frame ;)

 Here it is! The only thing I was semi disappointed about was that it didn't have any glass with it. The one I got my mom did, but then I thought that could maybe be fun for something different. I was then going to hang my twig wreath on it, but it just didn't flow right...I think it's the way the frame is divided. I kinda like it with nothing on it, but I am up for any suggestions!

Rachel shared this idea with me on Pinterest:

 Very cute!

 Another view...

 Onto the next project....do you remember when Rachel posted about Pinterest? Well, if you don't have one by now, you need to get one!! Check out this awesome idea I have pinned:

I absolutely LOVE this!! And look what my amazing sis and bro-in-law gave me after I told them about the idea....

 Ahhhh! I was so excited! I kinda want to paint it, but also kinda don't. Any suggestions?

 Annnd here is the next one....

I've been wanting to paint this baby for a long time after I got it for $10. I love the design of it! However, I do not have a lot of experience with re-finishing furniture, so I wasn't sure the best way to approach it....some people told me I would need to get special stuff to remove the paint after they tried to sand it, others told me I could just paint over it...help please! Janice!! (Maggie's mom) :)

Look at the nice design someone painted on there for me....

I'm also debating the color to paint it. Any of you that know me well know I love pretty much any shade of blue/teal. But, I already have this teal table from another junk sale...

and I have another awesome green table my friend Marissa gave us as a wedding present. 

I honestly was thinking of a shade of dark yellow (my sister has her walls painted this color and it is awesome). I am planning on putting this desk upstairs where the walls are painted a darker green...so I need something lighter. The yellow goes with some other decorating ideas I have for up there, but then again...I have a lot of ideas going crazy in my head with other painting/decorating ideas I have for other rooms in the house. Any advice for color for this dainty table?!?!

Help friends!!

my husband's dream day

he spent the day golfing, while his bedroom made a total transformation. and not a finger was lifted. or should i say....none of brandon's finger's were lifted:) my mom and i busted our booties all. day. long.

i was quite the busy bee this past week. the bedroom makeover is now 85% complete! my last post explained which projects needed to get finished/started, so today i will give you an update. but first, i have to give a little shout out to my mama. she pretty much rocks when it comes to helping me around my house. i couldn't have done everything without her!! she has a lot of experience in the DIY field, especially when it comes to painting and furniture refinishing....she's pretty much my go-to lady. you're the best, mom:)

anyway. on to the updates:
we have two "new" pieces of furniture, new curtains for the window and a new wall color.
brandon and i found our "new" dresser and night stand at an estate sale about a month ago. we happened to see a sign for it early in the morning and on a whim, decided to check it out. i bought so many cool things (which is a topic for an entirely new post), two of which are now living in our bedroom. the dresser is actually in great condition, but needed a few tweaks. here is a "before" picture, after i took off the hardware (which needed to be replaced 25 years ago).



and after:

and to think we we scored it for a mere $15?!...it was a deal that couldn't be passed up! up close, the finish was an orange glaze (yikes!), so i sanded that off and bought some oil based paint in a creamy white color. my mom educated me on how great oil base paint is for furniture, since it holds up better to knicks and scratches than latex paint. the dresser got two coats of white and waited to be transported from the garage into the bedroom. i found some knobs for the top drawers, but i'm still waiting to get some pulls (long story), which is why the bottom drawers have to be cracked open.

the other old piece of furniture we snagged, was this great little side table. i had no idea what i was going to do with it, but it was only $10 and too cute to walk away from. i sanded it and painted it one of my favorite shades of blue. i forgot to take a "before" picture, but it was originally a chestnut brown stain. i think i took 20 years off it's life with the new color:)

saturday was D-day. brandon went off to his golf tournament and mom and i went to work. peyton even cooperated and took a two and half hour nap, so we got the painting done in no time! i chose to paint the walls a grey/taupe color. the Sherwin Williams paint chip is called "amazing gray" (but we had Diamond Vogel color match it....support local businesses!). it sure beats the pale, pale lavender that screamed at me when i woke up every morning. i love how it turned out! it has great flow with the rest of the house. here is a set of before and after pictures:

before

after!

those curtains are really what tie everything together. originally, i was planning on buying some fabric and making my own curtains, but we calculated that it would have cost $150 to make my own. not to mention all the time and effort needed to finish them. on that note....world market never disappoints. i used a coupon for one panel and then went back for the second panel with my mom's coupon:) i spent a third of what i would have if i tried to make my own. phew, glad i decided to skip that obstacle. the colors are perfect for the room and really bring some life to it. AND, brandon likes them.....double bonus. i was worried, because he doesn't understand my love for patterns and prints, but he's slowly learning and adapting:)

my dad helped out by hanging up the curtain rod and sitting at my house while peyton slept, so mom and i could run around the city of west des moines. thanks, pops!

SO. the only things i have left to finish is:
-pulls for the dresser
-finish the jewelry frame
-get some art on the those bare walls!

 what do YOU think? i wanna hear some feedback:)

p.s....see this terrible dresser that we've had to live with for the past four years? yeah...we kicked it to the curb. literally. brandon set it outside on the street for big trash day and just as he was heading back up the driveway, someone stopped and asked, "you're not throwing that away, are you??". haha....oh, yes we are.
they had it loaded up in their truck before i could say, "good riddance":)

a few things i am working on....

i am notorious for not finishing projects. or buying craft supplies for a project and then not even starting it. i think my husband is this way too, except it concerns house projects and not craft projects. put us together and things get put off. we ripped up the carpet in our dining/sitting room a few months back and have yet to fill all the holes around the outside. it took us months to smooth out our front yard after getting a new sewer line put in. our garage currently houses five projects that have yet to be finished (or even started) which means that both our cars are sitting in the driveway.

siiiigh...i have tried to change this trait about myself for quite sometime. but no luck. i have come to accept the fact that i am definitely a Project Starter and very rarely a Project Finish-er. and i am okay with that:)

here are a few projects i am working on right now:

1. creating my own jewelry frame, a la this. mine will look a little different, but will have the same vibe. i have all the pieces and parts, just gotta get it done!

2. a sunburst mirror for my living room. inspiration found here. status: the wooden dowels have been glued and glued and glued, but the whole shebang needs spray painted. pictures to come! (hopefully)

3. refinishing an old dresser that brandon and i snagged at an estate sale....for 15 bucks! we have been needing a new dresser since, well....forever, and this one was perfect! i need to slap a few coats of paint on it and add some new hardware and it will be fab. my plan is to get some paint today (!) and start working on it.

4. refinishing an old side table found at the same estate sale. the table was $10 and it was screaming for some love and a makeover. it has now been sanded and is ready for a pop of color.

these are just a few. BUT, three out of four of these will be done by the weekend. why the rush? it's Operation Make Over My Bedroom Weekend. my mom is coming over and we are going to hack out as much as we can. walls are getting painted, curtain rods will be hung (dad, wanna help?) and refinished furniture will be brought in. brandon will be at a golf tournament and will come home to an entirely different room to sleep in. lucky guy, eh? i'm calling it his Father's Day present this year:)

let's hope that by next week, i will have many pictures to show you all. and if i don't, maybe in a few months:)

happy wednesday!

ps.....can you believe it's june already?! the older i get, the faster the time flies. and to think that i was just complaining that it was january.....

spontaneous home improvements

last week brandon and i decided it was time to rip up the carpet in our front room. i was ready to tackle this task the minute we moved in, so when he finally gave me the go ahead, i didn't have to be told twice to run downstairs for the toolbox.

you see, while house hunting, brandon and i both knew that our hearts were set on finding an older home. the charm...the character...the history. there's something about living in a home that holds a story. the memories that are housed within the walls of a home are priceless. i'm sort of a sentimental schmuck and brandon always pokes fun at me when i remind him of our first apartment together on sheldon and our memories shared as newlyweds. or the house rented on 6th street, where i learned that i was going to be a mommy. and then nine months later, i learned how to be a mommy. and we can't forget the house on ontario street where peyton took her first steps and blew out her first candle. yeesh, i'm getting teary just typing about it.

yep...i'm a schmuck:)

anyway, we wanted to find a cute, old house that had seen many, many memories being made and continue to fill up the memory glass.

and with old houses, you get original, hardwood floors. the previous owner had carpet laid down to cover the hardwood. our front room is part living area, part dining area, so you can imagine my fear of trying to keep white carpet clean with a toddler (and future toddlers) who tells me she's "done" by throwing her food on the floor. oy.

we had planned a weekend where brandon would rent a floor sander and we would go to work sanding and refinishing the floors. but brandon and i are both antsy and wanted to dig in. we knew there was hardwood beneath the carpet, but had no idea what condition they were in. much to our surprise, when we pried up that carpet, there were beautiful, shiny wood floor staring back at us. brandon and i yanked out staples for about an hour and voila! an entirely different room. (brandon also spent the better part of sunday afternoon ripping out the tack board and all the nails that outlined the perimeter of the room.....so don't get me wrong, it did take some work...but much less than we anticipated!)

all we have left to do is fill in all the little nail holes and do some buffing and polishing, and we're done. i couldn't be more pleased with the outcome. i have crushed on my friend's and family's hardwood floors for years and now i have my own. i am one happy lady:)
here are a few before and afters:

this was taken earlier in the year, right after we painted.

post carpet destruction

there's still a few things to be done with this room, but we are so excited and happy about the latest find!

And Let There be Light!!

When Eric and I moved into our new house we loved pretty much every aspect of it. The people who had lived there before us had done a TON of amazing things with the house (seriously you should see the before and afters!) It will be 100 years old not too long from now :) Even the paint colors were ones that we enjoyed. It was awesome to not feel like we had to rush into painting every room. We lived in it a year before we officially decided we wanted to repaint the dining room.

Here is a before pic: 

We decided that the color was a little too dark, especially with the way the daylight comes into our house (our house faces east, so the windows on the side of this room face south, which doesn't allow a TON of daylight). It's a great color for the Christmas season, but for the remainder of the looong winter it doesn't help the glum feel. In the summer it felt off too. And to be completely honest, it wasn't a very "Hannah" color :) Does anyone else do this? My friends and I say this type of thing because we know each others' styles so well that they become titled as either very "Hannah", "Maggie", or "Rachel", etc.

So, I gathered a little inspiration from the room we have claimed ours at the house in Mexico we've stayed at the last two years. I absolutely adore the color scheme in this room...and as our good friend, Marissa pointed out...it was a very "Hannah's colors" room. :)

 The color of the walls of this room is actually the type of color I am looking at for when we re-do our kitchen (hopefully happening soon). I found a similar one when we were looking for the dining room paint called "Apple Crisp". Mmmmm...doesn't the name of that sound just perfect for a kitchen color?!

I also found some inspiration from my Better Homes and Gardens magazine, when they confirmed that my idea of the type of color I wanted  for the dining room could actually work. Thank you BHG!!

So, without further adieu...here is the new and improved dining room! (We re- painted just the top portion):

The color is "Juicy Passionfruit". It is a peachy, coral, orange color. It definitely brightens the room! I love how it looks with the dark wood-work. I think it goes great with the rest of our decorations and will be a color that works all year long for every season. Not to mention that it is very "Hannah" :)

A good friend of ours painted it for us...besides not having much spare time, we were also very intimidated by all of the trim!! I actually know a few great painters if you are ever in need--let me know!


So....what do you think?!