A Framed chalkboard

Here we are with another "left from April" post. haha...

Do yall remember the horrible storms that ripped through the south back in April??

They were awful, quite a few homes in my neighborhood are just now being rebuilt from this storm. 

As drab as this situation was a little bit of good did come from it.

You see one of my neighbors lost their shed and they apparently had it jam packed with antique goodies.

ie. this guy below.... I went digging trash day, in the rain to rescue this gem!!
 

 He sat in my garage until late May and I finally went to work.

 

All he needed was a fresh coat of paint and a chalkboard insert. 

Luckily I had a scrap piece of plywood just the right size laying around and many months prior I had purchased the chalkboard spray paint.

So.. you got it!! a FREE project and just what I needed to add to my little "office nook" we have created in the kitchen!

Want to see him now??

paint,

chalkboard

silicone.

one hour, DONE !!

 He has a few minor imperfections that I need to work on. Like a finial for the other side maybe? haha

Since this is a vintage frame with no backint the piece of painted plywood is suspended between heavy beads of silicone caulk. Worked like a charm!!

Now you get to see the dirty truth of what this room really looks like. haha

The desk my sewing machine is sitting on was my great grandmother's.

Momma says Granny Pennington would be proud her table is still being put to good use.

Notice its last "face lift" was ohhh 1991? yah...

It's on my maternity leave to do list. 

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And this list grows as the minutes pass...

Happy day before gobble gobble day!!

Purifying

A new year means newness all around.

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Time to purify our hearts, minds, and spaces.

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For me, when my home is clean, my head is clear.

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I can create.

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This is when the lord speaks to me and i am not worried about the dishes or fingerprints or dog hair lying around. 

{via}

*time to repurpose some pieces for storage.

{via}

*time to FINALLY label what is what

{via}

*and even if your closet is tiny like mine, learn to make the most of the space!

{via}

*maybe I will find some stuff in my garage sale pile to repurpose.

{via}

*and finally finally finally establish my gift wrapping station.

pretty sure i have all the stuff laying around the house and just need the time to put it together.

{via}

I mean aren't these spaces amazing....

{via}

*and a playroom. man does my little girl need a playroom. 

ps. isn't this space amazing??

I think caving and making a bunting banner is definitely in my future.

Okay friends off to church then time to get organized.

Psalms 51:10 Create a clean heart in me oh god and renew a right spirit in me. 

Happenings

I would SOOO.... be lying to yall if I said we were "taking it easy" over the holidays.

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In all actuality we worked like dogs finishing up projects here and there.

• Kitchen is painted
• new fixture hung (properly, key word) in the kitchen
• new curtains hung in master bedroom (ended up being very very time consuming)
• picture gallery is almost finished
• window project was started
• upstairs was organized
• removed all medication of any kind to higher ground
• and all photo's of 2010 are properly labeled and stored under the 2010 label (hallelujah!!)

 

**again please disregard the nastiness of the porch. hoping for a beautified version come late spring.

Paint color.. Benjamin Moore Abbington Putty with 25% darker tint.= LOVE

Light fixture is Pottery Barn and can be found here

however.. i found one lonely pendant at the PBO and got it for 49.97 {dont hate me}

Now, do you see where the oval mirror is on this wall??
let me show you a better view.

{see the big fat empty wasted space??}
...
Sidenote: yall are probably asking yourselves why we took our kitchen table out and did this?? Well after 3 miserably long phone calls with At&t it was determined the wiring in our house is old and that is why we loose internet connection up to 15 times a day. Yeah!! 15!! So one night laying in bed we decided we would try and move the computer to the first point of entrance into the home; i.e. kitchen phone jack. Well lo and behold, it works i tell ya!!!
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Thus the movement of homeoffice to kitchen eat-in area.
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So, back to that bare wall... desk/cords/tech-savvy items all relocated in front of window complete; I decided I wanted these.

 

My friend Maribeth got them and i just fell in love when i saw them in person.

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 Then I found this on some home website and figured we could build for way less than $799

* What are your thoughts??
Once we get a wrought iron gate to backyard this will be the main entry door, we will drop our things in the lockers and be on our way..

Then and Now.

I am waiting to finish glazing the rods to show the reveal picture of our curtains and the medicine cabinet is nothing to write home about so those pics aren't included.

In other news.

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About three weeks ago lil' bit found some Ambien in my nightstand drawer.

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I was doing my usual chore of making beds and she was watching little bear, or so i thought

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When i got into the den she had one pill in her mouth, one in her hand, one was in the bathroom sink and one migrated to the rug in her room.

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I immediately freaked and called poison control.

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The problem then was I had no idea how many pills were exactly in the bottle.

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So the very sweet lady at poison control proceeds to tell me if she gets sleepy within the hour go to the emergency room, this medication could cause my little 2 year old to go into cardiac arrest.

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GREAT!!!! 

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Well we went on to school and i kept her with me monitoring her for the next hour, and by the grace of god nothing happened to her.

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However this lit a fire under me to begin operation "store everything HIGH"

Then just when i think all of this is over, yesterday i again go to my room to make the bed.

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Gone 4 min. TOPS.
{seeing a reoccuring theme, either dont make bed or wake up earlier, check}

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I walk back into the den to discover my pinking sheers out of the sewing bag on the ottoman.

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And yes... my worst thoughts were confirmed.

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Although a tiny chunk, its a 4ish inch piece of golden tendrel laying on my couch and my precious angel saying "Mommy, look I cut!!!"

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I took a deep breath and laughed, I couldn't yell because I wasn't there to witness this even.

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Okay, so lesson learned... 

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Life is now in operation keep everything potentially dangerous stored.

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This picture conceals the evidence but ever since she cut she keeps saying "Poppy cut, Poppy cut!"
{ps my dad is a hairdresser}
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So, you know what we did??
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We went and got that little girls hair cut.
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She actually did really well.

excited about some curls

complete with her new do!!

Sentimental Sunday eh.. Monday

Cha Cha at Sit, Relax, and Read

is hosting a fun new linky party. 

Well I have had a small project I have been working on to go along with my Sentimental Post. 

Remember what my dining room used to look like?

Kinda boring, tan, and with alot of little furniture. 

It was great,I loved knowing we were keeping it in the family and it was my Memaw's. (dad's mom's) 

I really did love having it, that is until baby decided to start pulling on the corner cabinets.

they were top heavy and i just knew they were going to come crashing down on her. 

so we dropped the leaves of the table, put it in the organized tool shed, turned antique collectors shop 

guest house.

For a couple of days it set empty, then mom called saying I could have my Nanie and Paw Paw's dining room set (mom's parents) 

REALLY??

The set had this beautifully carved china cabinet that I have always loved... 

Swizzle SWEET!! 

did i really just say that?? anyway moving on.

Well this got me thinking, how much i HATED the color of the dining room, it was the color when we bought the house... so I got my wheels turning.

Yall haven't seen the bathroom 

{mainly because remodeling that room was put on hold when i got laid off}

but it is painted Notre Dame by Valspar.

here she is. 

a perfect dusty grey, picks up on the gorgeous veins in the carerra marble countertop!!

Well I thought i wanted something blue but the color in my kitchen was

Robin's Egg Blue by Behr

Well... I could use the remaining paint from the blue and dump in a little grey and see what happens...

what do i have to loose??

a beige wall??

So I tested and FELL IN LOVE

Here is the paint with the new furniture.

Yeah, the fabric on the chairs is oh, screaming 1992 but this is where 

we spent all the holidays of my childhood.

Aunts, uncles, cousins, both sets of grandparents, {Memaw came too} 

I distinctly remember being about 8 and wearing white tights with 

candy canes on them and snagging them on one of these chairs. 

soooooo many memories of happy times from my childhood, and I am sooooo glad

 I can create more memories around this table with my family!!!!

I also wanted to point out you can see the kitchen from this view. 

Can you see the vast difference in color between the dining room and kitchen??

Don't worry though, we won't be leaving the kitchen this color for long...

{we are thinking of using Abbington Putty by Benjamin Moore}

Don't you just love the carving in the legs and spindles in the china cabinet??

Best part.. cabinet is holding all of my sewing/crafting supplies...

Now just to find some new chairs, maybe parson's chairs.

What do yall think??

And artwork... 

botanicals?

mirrors?

If my Walls could talk.

A couple of weeks ago we were doing some "cleaning up" around the house. 

Since we do not have a home phone we thought we would eliminate the tacky phonejack faceplate.

Look what we discovered underneath.

If my walls could talk they would tell me a scary scary story of the 1960's.

Thought yall would enjoy seeing this. 

can i just go ahead and say i am sooo ready to change this paint color!!! OVER IT!!

Before and After First Edition

Before

missing a piece of wood...

After

This dresser is a Pottery Barn Teen piece. One of my neighbors had placed it on the curb due to a banged corner and a missing piece of wood.

Well honey lemme tell ya.. wood filler and some paint can cover a multitude of sins.

This is also a little sneak peek of our new decor in the den. I was so inspired by Layla's reading room, I just had to stripe something.

closeup of the finish

After a little elbow grease and some paint I think the faux finish and stripes really ties in the look of the den.


**stay tuned to see the look of the whole room. 

Welcome

So the time has come.... to hang my new front door.... I am super super excited about this....

Here is a little look at our process, and late last night we got the rest of the glass cleaned off....

Before......

I love you guys and all but i had to blurr out the numbers to my house,

there are too many crazys in the world to share everything!!

And After!!

Now doesn't the front look soo.... much better??

Thanks Mr. Kim for helping us hang the door, and he was right, staining wasn't hard at all....

As you can also see, our landscaping looks alot better than it did before, still a little bit to do but we have come quite a long way in one short year!!!

Outdoor Part 2

New Spring Arrangement for the Front door.
Dad and Casey hanging shutters on the front of the house
Somewhat filled in/cleaned up pond/deck area. (we ran out of dirt, sunlight, and time) we knew it would rain this week so we filled in what we could and figured next weekend we would return for more dirt.
Cleaned up the side of the house. HUGE undertaking. This was almost 8 inches deep of pine needles
luke begging to come out of the guest house

And of course the quintessential beagle howl, note the paw raise... we think HE may have female tendancies. just sayin'.....

Outdoor Deconstruction

As most of you know last May Casey and I bought a foreclosure. It has been an exciting/daunting task to take on these projects we originally said, "this will be so easy to redo." Well like many of you have said before tasks you thing are easy end up being much more time consuming.

Link it up...
I decided to link this post to Amanda's Show Me the Progress Linky Party. So as you enjoy seeing me, My husband, and my sweet daddy take down these ugly things tell me.. do you think we are headed in the right direction?? Any suggestions as to what we should do with our now empty space. All we knew is we wanted these two items gone.

1. because the mosquitos in the summer are insane out the frame
2. we wanted our daughter to have some more backyard place space
3. we wanted a place to put a table a chairs next to our grill so we can begin entertaining more.
4. So.... what do you think???? Have we gotten in over our heads??
   

The Backyard

We finally began the daunting task of taking out the koi pond, deconstructing the very tiny deck, and enclosing our screened in porch. Between last weekend and this weekend there isnt a bone, or muscle, rather that doesnt ache. I am learning the beauty of documenting my projects so i can bask in the after as i reflect on the before.
Casey really hates having his picture taken but was a real trooper through all of this.

mmm isnt this mildewed porch just gorg??? 

I am soooo glad to see this go.

Do I keep this fountain and repaint to reuse on the soon to be enclosed screened in porch??

Daddy, using the good ole crowe bar and hammer.

please note that we had to barricade the end of this deck because the nincompoop that built it didnt make stairs rather left it open. what does this spell for a beagle born to hunt???

TROUBLE!!! he kept getting stuck chasing all the neighbors cats who love to run around and taunt him. i am still devising a plan to keep them out... any suggestions?? cat nip.. bee bee gun?? Arsenic?? jk..

see this little buddy?? he is beginning to wonder if we are taking away his freedom.. or giving him more.... sooo confused.

did i mention that baby was soooo worried about daddy and poppy doing so much work. this over the top facial expression says it all.

pond filled with junk.... dont worry it was cleaned up.

This is the little pile from the last weekend in february.... Still need to edit the pictures from this past weekend. 

And thank you for sticking it out through this insanely long post.