Getting Graphic in the Green Room – Accent Wall Style!

I decided way back some time last year that the green room was in need of a little makeover, (more details on that to follow, so stay tuned) and what better way to get started in that direction than to do an accent wall?!

Ahh, the beloved accent wall - a new one pops up on my Pinterest feed at least three times a week, and it seems as though everyone in blogland is doing one… and well … now so am I!

Check it out:

I thought long and hard about how to accent this wall for a very, very long time – going from thoughts of a solid contrasting color, to stripes, to something stenciled, to finally deciding on something grahic, abstract and super colorful.  Even though this little project was a long time a coming, I am glad that I deliberated over it for as long as I did, making sure that it was something that I would absolutely love and that reflects me.

Here’s a quick little pictorial rundown of my day-to-day progress: (I am currently working on a more detailed how-to that’ll even include a little step-by-step video, so again, stay tuned for that!)

And finally, after making a few more tweaks, I called this turkey done!

My inspiration for this project came primarily from the painting below by my super talented and bestie, Devon Nowlin:

and also from this image that I came across on Etsy:

As an added bonus, I completed this project just in the nick of time to submit toward the self-imposed  “Pinterest Challenge” that the ladies over at YoungHouseLove and BowerPower cooked up to get folks to stop pinning and start doing their pinned projects (more on that here). So you can click on the button below to get in on this big ol’ pinterest-project-share-fest and check out lots of other fabulous DIY projects that the great people of blogland are doing and showing off:

Here are some of the accent walls that I have pinned along the way that have inspired me to create an accent wall of my own:

click pic for source

click pic for source

click pic for source

Thanks for looking!!!!!

Master Bedroom Painted!

Well it only took me three weeks (working at it a few weeknights a week) but it’s finally all done! This was my first attempt at painting a ceiling, aside from the teeny tiny one in the master bathroom, and also my first time to paint all the trim in a room, which for this room included baseboards, crown moulding, two door surrounds, three window sills and also the closet trim.  Whew, glad it’s all done!!! And I am very, very pleased with the results

I wanted the walls a shade of greige, something earthy and clay-like, so with the following inspiration colors in mind…

… I narrowed it down to these three options:

Benjamin Moore’s “Revere Pewter,” “Baby Fawn,” and ” Dove Wing.”

After slapping a sampling of each color on a variety of walls in my bedroom, right away it was clear that “Dove Wing” was much too light and “Revere Pewter” was too cool for my liking.  I really liked “Baby Fawn,” but didn’t find the hue saturated just quite enough, so I tried a fourth sample – “Baby Fawn” mixed at 100% darker, and BAM! I found my color:

I decided to paint the trim semi-gloss ultra white first, that way I didn’t have to be too precise in my efforts, and boy, what a difference it made:

It’s so clean-looking and really makes everything pop!

After getting through that phase, I tackled the ceiling next, mainly because I really wanted it painted and I knew the likelihood of me ever getting around to doing it after the walls were complete would be drastically decreased if I didn’t do it first! My first thought on ceiling color was to go lighter.  I thought I would just mix all the paint samples along with some of the wall paint and go with that, but after a little deliberation, I decided that I wanted to paint the doors in there black, so I thought making the ceiling a little darker and moodier would tie everything together real nice (we’ll see how that all works out at a later time).  So in addition to all the samples getting mixed together, I added a little black to the mix, which resulted in this:

Then finally, the following week, Olive and I got busy painting the walls, which you can see a peek of in the above photo:

 

The final outcome:

I really like it! The wall color leans toward a warmer beige tone at well-lighted times, and toward a cooler gray tone in low-key lighting. I’m currently working on getting the curtains back up and I’m already liking how the darker accent colors pop against the more neutral wall color.  So hopefully the addition of a dark headboard and black doors will all work out in the end, we shall see…

Thanks for looking!

Dresser Drawers Turned Wall Shelves Phase 2 – Decoration & Styling

Here it is folks! The winter edition of the unofficial Pinterest Challenge, as created by Katie B. from the blog Bower Power and explained in further detail right here on Young House Love.  For this “challenge,” which is basically a self-imposed challenge to get some of those Pinterest projects that we all have tons of pinned, and turn them into things we’ve actually DONE!

So without further adieu, I share with you the dresser drawers turned wall shelves that I decorated and styled up for this challenge:

When I left off on the installation process of these shelves, they looked like this:

Getting them all prettied and decked up was a fairly simple project.  I just used some decorative wrapping paper, from World Market, cut to size and then adhered the paper to the “backs” (technically the drawer bottoms) of the shelves using double-stick tape:

So much prettier and happier looking than the dull, brown backgrounds, don’t you think!?

And as far as “styling” the shelves, I just grabbed some books, bookends, and other little knickknacks I had on other shelves around the house and quickly arranged them to have some photos for this challenge post.

Feel free to checkout tons of other really great Pinterest projects by clicking on the ”Pinterest Challenge” picture below and scrolling to the very bottom of the post:

And you can click right here to check out the inspiration photos that I have pinned to my Pinterest board for this project:)

Thanks for looking!!!

2012 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

4,329 films were submitted to the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. This blog had 14,000 views in 2012. If each view were a film, this blog would power 3 Film Festivals

Click here to see the complete report.

Patio Perk Up

It all started with one piece of furniture getting added to the patio mess already at hand. As you can see below (this was about the only “before” shot I could find) the patio was in some need of attention, with bicycles, leftover camping equipment, and rescued living room furniture amongst other things strewn haphazardly about:

After adding the porch swing (thanks mom!) things kind of just got rolling from there. First it was deciding on this arrangement and placement of all the furniture:

Since I was already moving and shaking out there I decided to go ahead and hang up the string lights I already had on hand (bought them on clearance at World Market a couple months ago):

 

Then, you know how sometimes when you update one part of something, the other parts start looking kind of shabby by comparison? Well I had one of those moments and on a whim decided to paint the door:

And add the butterfly door knocker I bought at the Old Home Store over a year ago! :

Things were starting to look pretty good, except for that sad old window covering. Luckily I found one at Lowe’s in the clearance stuff (regular $49, got it for $23 because the package was open and didn’t have any instructions – no biggie) that fit perfectly. And lastly, I added an old crib sheet of Olive’s to the seat cushion of the swing to push the whole ensemble over into the realm of “granny chic” and voila! Things are looking pretty swell out on the patio if I do say so myself :

Thanks for looking!

Entryway Curtains Updated

Anyone who has lived in their home for more than a few years, knows how furnishings and accessories are constantly getting moved around in the grand scheme of nesting and ‘getting everything right’.  That’s actually one of my favorite things about having a house of my own - I get to sort of shop around in the different rooms of the house, switching things around with spending very little to no money at all and make some pretty big impact changes.  So as is what we did with the entryway curtains.

This is what the picture window in the entryway was looking like before our quick little update (click here to see how we got to this point):

After snagging these curtains from the blue room…

… and giving the sheers a little color refresher…… we ended up with this:

Adding these curtains and hanging them high and wide definitely gives the room a more finished and polished look, makes me smile

Getting In the Christmas Spirit

You may have gotten a peek at our Christmas tree in the previous post, but I went on ahead and took a close-up pic for, you know, for official purposes and such.  This is the same tree and ornaments we have used for the third year in row now:

Here it is in 2010:

And in 2009:

Not a whole lot of difference from year to year, except for the house looking more significantly “lived-in” with each successive year that passes (we had only been in the house for about a month when we set up the tree in 2009).

And since we’re traveling down memory lane, here’s a pic from the very first (and only, now that I think of it) real tree Olive and I have ever had as a family together back in 2008 when we lived in our old rent house:

Ahh, the memories.  I also just realized we’ve been using the same ornaments for quite some years now as well, hmm.

But back to what we’ve been doing to get into the Christmas spirit around here more recently… Olive and I decked up the entryway a little.  She ornated (I’m pretty sure that’s a word) the miniature tree, while I hung (hanged?) ornaments from the chandelier:

I even surprisingly found the time early last week to adorn the fireplace with festive holiday ornamentation:

Words can’t even describe how much I love, love, love, L.O.V.E., love how the Christmas decorations look now that the fireplace is painted white (more on that here). So much better than last year’s dauntingly dark backdrop if I do say so myself.

Still on the to-do list, (Olive and I don’t intend to overlook decking out that front yard of course) we’ll hopefully get around to wrapping the columns with lights, staking our happy little snowmen in the plantless planting bed, and busting out the big ol’ inflatable santa-in-a-caboose-with-Rudolph-peeking-up-and-down yard thingy this weekend…

HAPPY HOLIDAYS EVERYONE!

Den Progress – Furniture Arrangement

Considering how large this space is, it really did take quite a bit of brainstorming on my part before finally coming up with a floor plan that felt right, was multi-functional, intentional and well thoughtout, and of course that I liked.  As I mentioned in this post, I really hadn’t given the den much attention at all in the way of design, or even functionability for that matter, until just a couple of months ago.  I knew that I wanted the room to function as both the designated tv room and as a guest bedroom space (with tv viewing possible from the bed), similar to the setup in the following inspiration photo:

click for source via Pinterest

But before I show-and-tell where we ended up after this big ol’ transformation, I’ll share some of the how-we-got-there moments first.  As part of the aforementioned brainstorming process, the furniture went through a series of configurations (both on paper and actually) to see what felt and looked best.  It went from this:

which I nixed because I couldn’t make that little window and the tv look balanced and it was driving me nuts (sorry, no pic with the tv actually on the dresser).  I even scooted the dresser closer and further away from the back wall and also switched the tv from the right side of the dresser to the left.  Still no dice.  So then I shifted things around yet again and this side of the room sat looking like this for a couple of weeks:

While the other side remained like this:

I actually kind of liked the L-shaped configuration of the couch and tv stand in this set-up.  It left plenty of space for getting our wii gaming on and boasting our own interpretation of any given DWTS dance routine (dude, that Rikki and Derek Psycho tango was off the chain AWESOME!) we felt a likening to.  But I wasn’t so pleased with the placement of the bed.  Even if I swapped it over to the back wall (with the head of the bed against the same wall that the tv/dresser are against) it still just didn’t seem right, and you wouldn’t get a good view of the tv from the bed with the room set-up that way either.  I was in a bit of a floor-plan rut.  Also, the vision of a day bed kept coming to my mind and I was trying to work through how I could have a day bed look with the use of a queen-sized bed. So where do we go when we need some super, get-me-thinking-in-the-right-direction insperado? Yes, onto Pinterest I went and lo and behold I ran into many an inspiring photo of queen-sized beds as day beds.  Here are some of my favorites:

click for source via Pinterest

click for source via Pinterest

And that’s when it hit me… put the long side of the bed against the wall that the couch was currently against, place the sofa back-side to the bed and put the tv/dresser in front of the couch. BAM!  I came up with a floor-plan!  But seeing it is a whole lot easier to grasp than reading about it, so here you go:

I love it!  (Oh and just a little side-note, Olive made the bed all by herself to help out mama get the room picture ready – what a sweet little helper she is).  I actually considered flanking the bed with the two Billy bookcases and putting a wholelotta pillows against the wall between the bookcases to create the whole day-bed look I really liked, but I couldn’t get over the fact that there wouldn’t be a wall behind your head if/when you slept on the bed if I did that, and that’s just weird.  So I created a little bed-alcove of sorts instead by placing a bookcase at the side and foot of the bed.  I think it works.  I also really like how the sofa creates separation, yet you still have an excellent view of the tv from the bed.  And as an added bonus, the bed serves as a perfectly convenient dropping/folding post for the laundry (the laundry room is just a few steps away from the foot of the bed, behind those gray curtains in the picture above).  Still though, I haven’t quite figured out what I’m gonna do with the corner of the room where the Christmas tree currently resides.  I am playing around with the idea of putting the computer there, but I really like the computer centrally located within the house (in the kitchen), so that probably won’t happen.  I don’t know, we’ll see where things end up after the holidays.  But as for now, I am, to say the least, very pleased with the way things are coming along in the den.

Now, just to see how far this room really has come, here is what it looked like in all of it’s bachelor-pad glory before any den-redesigning ever took place:

YIKES!

Yeah, I think it’s a major improvement.  Now onto the details – curtains, decking up the walls, and maybe even a diy diamond tufting project or two in there as well.  I’ll keep ya posted

Thanks for looking!

Halloween Mantel

Decorating the mantel for the upcoming holidays was the biggest motivator to finally getting the fireplace painted white (more on that here).  Immediately after painting, Olive and I got right down to business with decking it all up with eerie Halloween decor… check it out:

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

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Bedroom Closet Organization

Welcome to the exciting world of organizing with Serina!  Can I get a whoop, whoop cause this is gonna be an amazing and thrilling ride, so hold onto your seats and… *ahem,* not really.  This is probably the exact opposite of exciting, and also a glimpse into the crazy and OCD mind that which is mine.  Consider yourself forewarned, here we go…

This is where we left off, with the closet painted and prepared for some major organizational action to take place – click here to catch up to speed on that if need be:

Ahhh, the blank canvas – just lovely isn’t it!  Where to begin with the organizing process? I knew I shouldn’t go at this rogue, so I decided to throw down a little rough sketch (no exact measurements or anything) of how I thought everything would fit into the closet with it looking as nice, neat and organized as possible.  This is what I came up with:

The idea was to have all my shoes go on the left side of the closet along with purses and bags and a few other accessories, and have all my hanging clothes on the right side with all my foldables (t-shirts, jeans, etc.) landing in the middle inside the cubbies.

Here is how half of the actual ”Plan A” turned out in real life:

Not too bad.  I did deviate from the plan just slightly since the horizontal shoe rack actually fit better and made more sense going on that little raised up portion of the closet rather than the floor, and luckily, I just so happened to have a shoe carousel lying around (I originally planned on using it in Olive’s closet, but she really DID NOT like it) to store the rest of my shoes.  But as you may have already concluded – if there’s a plan A, there’s more than likely a plan B - and such is the case herein.  Allow me to explain.  After seeing all those shoes (ALL THOSE SHOES) in one place, things were starting to look a tad too cramped up and cluttered - not the look I was going for.  Also, the shoe carousel was creeping up on my designated purse area, so that was no bueno as well.  And, as a matter of fact, I really DID NOT like the looks of that dang shoe carousel myself!  Yucky shoe soles glaring right out at me, blehck!  No hate intended toward any of you shoe carousel lovers out there

Thus, ”Plan B” was conceived:

In this plan everything is basically just flipped onto the opposite side of the closet. The right side of the closet is slightly wider than the left which allows the horizontal shoe rack to extend out a little more, in turn, allowing for more shoe storage.  Also, the hanging shoe rack would sit several inches above the floor on this side of the closet allowing for even further shoe storage, on top of which will be hidden shoe storage.  So hooray for a plus, plus, plus in this new adaptation!  Additionally, there will be more breathing room for my bags and purses in this plan as well.

Here’s how Plan B turned out:

Note:  The “hanging cubbies” on the left side of the closet from the Plan B diagram were nixed upon measuring the space and realizing there was absolutely no room for it to fit.  Also, I ended up taking the cheapest route as far as adding the lower hanging rod with use of a “rod doubler” as I found it to be called, rather than adding a shelf that supports a rod.  Additionally, I was able to add a smaller shoe cubbie over on the right corner of the closet, while hanging my belts over on the adjacent corner (not pictured, oops) rather than front-and-center as indicated in the plan.  So hip, hip, hooray for utilizing all available space!

I think it works! I still have plans to add a rack or rods for hanging my purses and bags, (I’m thinking of using the IKEA Grundtal s-hooks and rails) add a lovely and billowy drapery treatment to cover that open doorway, and also work in some pretty baskets for the cubbies, (the photos have a little staging going on) but so far, so good in my meager opinion!

So as not to have you nodding over with this somewhat yawn-inducing post, I’ll leave you with some amazingly organized closet eye-candy:

click pic for source via Pinterest

click pic for source via Pinterest

click pic for source via Pinterest

click pic for source via Pinterest

click pic for source via Pinterest

click pic for source via Pinterest

Hope you’re inspired!

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