Buh-Bye Seventies!

*Update: The paint I used on the legs of my new table below is Behr's "Country Dairy" in an eggshell finish. The wood color for the top is Minwax's "Dark Walnut" stain. I used three coats of Minwax polyurethane in satin to seal the top.

It's been quite a week! First of all, thank you for your sweet messages for Nina's birthday, and your compliments on our new family room! I have loved reading each and every one of them as I sit on my new couch and try to catch my breath. We had a blast this weekend with the parties and all the celebrating. But now I need a nap. For, like, two weeks.

Instead, I am going to show you one final project that I worked on last week for the new family room, and then...well, I am serious about that nap!

A few of you mentioned the new coffee table in my photos. Here is what it used to look like. Hello, 1970s! (Hey, nothing against the seventies. I was born there. But I don't want to live there now!)

One night I couldn't sleep, and this idea came to me. I just took off the "wings" of this table and patched the resulting holes.

Then I sanded down the top of the table and re-stained it. The previous color was a bit too orange for me. I added a few coats of polyurethane in a satin finish.

I painted the legs a creamy white and then sanded the edges to make it look a little antiqued.

No more 1970s!

And now, about that two-week nap I mentioned. :) I really am going to take a bit of a bloggy break. But I want to very sincerely apologize to all of you. I try to get around to visit each person who comes here, and with all the goings-on lately, I just have not been able to do that. I think if you take the time out of your busy life to leave a nice comment for me, I want to return the favor on your blog, and get to "know" you as well. And that has really fallen through the cracks in the past week.

I am not leaving for good or anything, but just need a week or two to gather my life together, spend some non-crazy time with my family, and get into the groove of having a little girl in pre-school and a baby and a new family room to enjoy! :) All good things. I will be back with more projects in a few weeks. Take care and I will miss you all!

In Praise of Craig's List

So, I have been stressing out about the rug for my new family room for weeks. It's ridiculous because I know there are people with way worse problems than this. But some of you may identify with my need to make everything "perfect," and it is this need that stresses me out when I re-do a room.

I wanted a rug that would "warm up" the room, color-wise, but not overpower it. I also wanted one that would be comfortable for my family to roll around on, and that would hide some of the inevitable kid and doggie stains. I fell in love with a sisal one at Pottery Barn, but the rough texture of the sisal meant that there would be no cozying up on that rug, and the lack of pattern mean that there was nothing to hide the inevitable stains.

Enter Craig's List.

I have been randomly searching "brown rug" on Craig's List for weeks. The other day, this one popped up. It's the Graham rug from Pottery Barn, now discontinued but still gorgeous! And the best part was that it was in great shape, was a mere 15 miles up the highway from me, and cost only $275. That's compared to the original price of $700 or more.

It's gotten a hefty steam cleaning, and it fits perfectly with the new colors in the room.

Henry likes it too!

I will take a moment now to apologize that I have not been around much this week to visit all of you in blogland. My little girl, above, started pre-school yesterday, and this mama's heart has been breaking a little bit all week. Toss in the fact that today is her 3rd birthday, and that we have planned not one, but two parties (one for family and one for all her little friends) this weekend, and I am barely functioning.

I hope to catch my breath early next week and be back around. In the meantime, let's all celebrate the wonders of Craig's List.

And wish my sweet little Nina Elizabeth a Happy 3rd Birthday!

New Family Room Reveal!

*Edited to add: The houndstooth chairs and the leather couch are all from Kacey Fine Furniture, a local place here in Denver. I love how they look together! Also, someone asked about the color on the walls. It's "Cracker Crumb," by Valspar (painted a few years ago, I am not sure if they still have that color). And the fabric for the curtains came from Calico Corners. It is cotton, which I love since we have little kids, but I also went on a mad hunt for a very similar silky version of this buffalo check fabric at Hobby Lobby, and ended up getting some on clearance there.

Hi everyone! I am so excited to show you what I've been up to! My husband and I just recently bought a new couch and chairs to replace the old set that had been hanging around since his bachelor days. Here's a photo of the old family room, with the old furniture.

Without further ado, here's the new room!

I am so in love with the colors!

I went with some deep browns and caramels as the base colors, then added in some warm yellows and robins egg blue as accents. Hopefully the browns and caramels keep it from feeling too feminine.
Remember my $5 floor fan? Love it in here! And my buffalo check curtains? Yep, I actually made them...I am still in shock!

This plant is actually alive. It's not fake. Not sure how long it will stay that way.

Do you like my hanging plates from Home Goods? Cheap and easy and oh-so-cute!

I even made curtains for the adjoining dining room. What in the world is happening to me? Who am I?

There are still some projects to be done in here. I hope to re-stain and paint that coffee table, so I'll be showing you that sometime soon. And I'm still searching for the perfect rug...the one that's in there now is on loan from my upstairs loft until we find something that fits.

Lots of projects in the coming weeks! In the meantime, I think I'll sit on my new couch and just take it all in!

Salvaged Windows + Burlap = Fabulous!

Happy Friday! I hope you've had a good week. My husband was out of town for four days so, as usual, I got about halfway on a bunch of projects but then...real life intervened. :) C'est la vie, I guess!

Here's a fun idea that can be adapted lots of ways. Years ago, my husband (then fiance) and I bought these salvaged windows. At the time, I simply sanded off some of the flaking paint and gave the wood the once-over with some polyurethane to keep it from peeling further. They looked adorable above my husband's bachelor bed (although he would object to the term "adorable" and might prefer "manly and strong in an artsy-kind-of-way").

I dug them out of a box after forgetting about them for years. I tried hanging them on the wall but felt like they needed a little something instead of that vast expanse of glass. Enter: burlap. Seems like burlap is everywhere these days!

I just glue-gunned the burlap to the inside frame of the windows all the way around.

I think the windows look perfect sitting above my work table. I love how the burlap gives them more interest and texture.

And I even had a little extra to wrap a smells-good-but-is-way-too-orange candle. Now it looks cute but doesn't scream "Sesame Street!"

And you may have noticed in the photo above that my sewing machine is back! That's because I've been making more curtains in anticipation of the big shiny furniture delivery truck that's coming to my house over the weekend.

Family room makeover coming next week, stay tuned!

The Weekend

Hi everyone! How was your weekend?

Thank you all SO much for your anniversary well wishes! You were all so sweet and genuine in your comments...it still amazes me that we haven't met in person, because I feel like I "know" so many of you, and I really appreciate the community we have here.

I will say this about my anniversary weekend: it was not what I expected! On Friday night the babysitter arrived, and in the chaos of letting her in the house and going over all the details, I let the dog out. This dog:

...who then proceeded to wander the neighborhood, eventually getting picked up by someone and dropped at a local dog shelter, where we didn't find him until the next morning. So our anniversary dinner at the fancy new restaurant was spent staring across the table at each other, imagining our dog dead in a ditch. Romantic, huh?

In other weekend events, Henry had his first taste of rice cereal. I love the photo above. He looks like he's saying "Mama, what IS this crap?" But he eventually came around!

Lastly, I snagged a few minutes for this little project below. I have a strange thing about topiaries. Other people gravitate towards shoes, or purses, or chocolate. Me? Topiaries. Weird. I picked this one up last weekend at Goodwill:

I liked the height, but didn't like the greenery. In person it looked really fake. And the pot wasn't doing much for me either. So I clipped all the old greenery and bought some new (fake) stuff at Michael's. Using some floral wire and my glue gun, I attached the new greenery to the top. Then just popped it into a new terra cotta pot.

Much better, don't you think? The best part was when I went to Lowe's to buy the pot. I brought the new topiary with me so I could test it out, and someone asked me "Is that plant hard to maintain?" To which I replied, "Well, it's fake, so...No." Love it!

More projects to come...everything's half-finished! Motivation, where art thou?