Roasting Marshmellows?

I have somehow talked Jeremy into redoing our fireplace area.  It is rather ugly and I hate it.  In my head this will be a quick fix and make a big difference.  Now, I am sure in reality it will be a big fiasco but with the same result of a big, beautiful difference.

Here is what we have:

Side note: This was for a shower, duh.  I don’t normally have bows and balloons there.  And the wall color is different.  BUT, you get the ugly drift.

Here is my Inspiration Photo:

I mean… seriously?  Do you even need to know why I have chosen this picture?  The full slab is the icing on the cake.  I’ll take it.

Stay tuned to see if I can actually talk him into doing this the ‘right way’.  Which, is my way. 

Rugs - Check

Why are any sort of rugs so difficult for me?  If you recall it took me MONTHS to order a rug from Horchow for the pool table room.  In all honesty, I found the perfect rug on day 1 of looking but the price was high.  Jeremy said something like ‘you are on heroin if you think we are buying that’.  Fast forward a few months and he changed his tune and let me order the rug.  Moral to the story?  If I wait long enough and talk about something long enough Jeremy will say screw it and let me order what I would like. 

Sadly, this time didn’t go quite as planned.  I am happy with the order that I placed, but I am anxious to see if I will still be this happy when they arrive (who knows when that will be).  I didn’t want those ugly scratchy door mats that I see everywhere and I didn’t want to spend $100 either.  I needed 3!  I went to Ballard Designs and ordered this outdoor rug in the lighter blue for the entry way.

Then I ordered two of these in the neutral tones for the back doors.  I initially wanted something yellow and blue to tie in the colors in the pool table room, but there were already two different patterns of blue and I didn’t want to over load the area.  Plus, this rug was available in a much smaller size.  So here is what I ended up getting.

Hope they come in soon!! 

Up next, Valentine’s Day Pizza Party at our house!  8 adults and 6 kids…should be fun and loud!

Hang It Up

Remember my last post about the desk revamping?  Well, I completed it and I love the outcome!  We got the desk for free from a friend at Crossfit over a year ago and we were going to paint it and sell it, but we realized that we needed to desk.  So, home it stayed!  Bare with me through this entry and you will see the final look.

I have been bugging Jeremy about our game room… I hated it.  Thankfully, last summer we got rid of the wood paneling, retextured the walls, and painted a neutral there.  I wasn’t a fan of the old signs that we had up, they were great, but just wasn’t my cup of tea for in the house.  I finally buckled down and started decorated!  I made the large scrabble wall before Thanksgiving and I LOVE how it turned out.

Initially I wanted to make a shelf with a cubby system and hooks out of a wooden pallet.  We have a bazillion for the business, so I thought well that would be mainly free!  My sister, Allison, reminded me that my parents had some really cool door knobs and I should use those instead of hooks.  Hello, free again!  We loaded up and ran over there yesterday and my dad has a TON of cool stuff in his workshop and we totally nixed our plans for the pallet.  We ended up getting a really cool old piece of wood that was perfect for a shelf and then 5 glass knobs that we had at the house in NY.  I also stole some of my dad’s art work!  Thanks parentals!

I forgot to take pictures before we started, my bad.  All we did is measure out where we wanted the knobs to be, marked, and drilled holes.  Jeremy’s dad basically has a hardware store in his workshop so we got some carriage bolts that worked perfectly.  Push the bolts through the back and screw on the knobs.  Easy enough!

Jeremy bought Flush Mount Hangers at Lowes and it worked like a charm.  We used our stud finder to hang the shelf since it was so heavy and well, we are hanging stuff on it too!

Done!  We simply anchored my dad’s art on the top and I painted a small decorative “D” yellow to put to the left.  I remembered that I bought it for super cheap at Hobby Lobby and it has been sitting in the closet for at least a year.

Here is the desk area almost ready!  The desk is done but we have to hang up the poetry piece of the art that goes with the painting.  We didn’t have the right stuff to do that today.  Loving our new Gateway computer!

Up next is to finish off the room by adding new chevron curtains.  I ordered them off Etsy and I should get them this week!  See ya later boring window and wall area!

Now if I can only find some stupid door mats that aren’t uglier than dog crap.

Pop of Color Please

Stay tuned for the final results, but here is what I have been working on the last two days while E has been snoozing.

2013 Resolution…

I am only 19 days late, no big.

After starting to read blogs again, I have decided that I should write in mine.  Hope this actually happens!

Let me catch you up on life.

Still married. ha!  (Jeremy just read that and asked if there was an expiration date.  Funny kid.)

Emma is now a little over 16 months and has the personality of a 16 year old.  She is now called “The Voice”.  She talks loud, she laughs loud, and she cries even louder.  But she is sweet and we love love love LOVE her to death!  (She is currently messing with her sleep sheep in her crib instead of napping… )

We remodeled our kitchen last summer and we changed up our game room.  No more ugly wood paneling! Woohoo!!  So, we don’t have anymore big projects left in the house, yeah.  Just small things here and there.
(This picture is obviously before it was completed since there isn’t hardware.  Don’t worry, we have some now!)

Our business is doing great and we have a fun time working on it.  If you are in the need for a high end cooler company, you know who to call!  Brute Outdoors of course!

I said goodbye to sweet Jetty last summer and said HELLO to spacious Explorery.  Best purchase ever.

I have a new nephew!!!  Oh my goodness he is so sweet and SO cute!  T-Bone (Thomas) was born on December 26.  He was so nice to wait until after the holidays.

I have done a few quick and cheap DIY projects to spruce up some walls.
(Again, these are actually up on the wall but I have no picture… just image them 3x3 in the playroom.)

Okay E is currently chatting in her crib.  Bye friends!

Our sweet mermaid

I can’t believe that I haven’t blogged about Emma’s first birthday party!  She is almost 14 months already, oops.  Life is busy these days, sorry friends! 

I started looking for ideas on Pinterest and just online in general a few months before her birthday and I know I wanted to have a Mermaid/Under the Sea theme!  It all started with the invitation designed by my sister, Jen.  She owns Lil Mop Top and has wonderful invitations and cards for sale on Etsy.  (Yes, I just blacked out the address and it looks nice and ghetto.  Don’t hate!)

Then I went to work!  Luckily we were having an outdoors party (and it was a BEAUTIFUL day) so we didn’t need a ton of decoration.  I tried to make as much of it as possible to save money, but I did buy a few things.  I bought these blue poms at Party City and then the coral colored ones on Etsy.

For the food area.  We kept it super simple.  We just did sandwiches, fruit, chicken salad, and cupcakes.  My mom made the cupcakes, thankfully!  There was a lot of people and I couldn’t do it all so she offered to help make them.  I did make the cupcake toppers.  I bought the digital prints off Etsy and just put them in the circles, cut, and then taped them to toothpicks.   The photography was done by a good friend a few weeks before and I found a great deal on Wolf Camera for the canvas.  All of the coral serving pieces were super cheap from Target and the blue ones were even cheaper from Dollar Store!  Bam!

The favor table was part of my favorite area for the party!  I made a banner with the Cricut using the Life’s a Beach cartridge and I think it turned out so adorable!  The favors were just buckets loaded with pool toys, bubbles, and sunglasses.  Everything was purchased from Walmart, Dollar Store, and Michaels. 

For adult favors my friend Kendra, from Simply Pressed, made these adorable coasters for me.  Check her out!  She came make anything you want and is super easy to work with.

I found an old wooden high chair at a garage sale for $5 that just needed to be fixed a bit, which is no problem for my family!  Ran up to Home Depot and bought a small amount of coral paint and I loved the final outcome.  It was pretty ugly beforehand!  I don’t have a picture because I got a new phone… oops.  Anyways, I then used the Cricut to cut out pendants and shapes to decorate it.  Her smash cake was made by one of our best friends and it was GOREGOUS!  Exactly what I was thinking and I am so happy that she offered to make it for us.  It was perfection and DELICIOUS!  How great are my friends?!

Cracks me up that Lilly was eating what Emma dropped.  She is so sweet to share.  And, do you think she liked the cake?!

We had a slip and slide area for the kids and of course there was lots of swimming.  We had a GREAT time!  We are blessed that Emma has wonderful family and friends that love her dearly!!