Chalkboard!!

I am in love with my chalk board! I have done two fun pictures so far but I've been using it for lists like crazy.

This is the first time I used the chalkboard. Let me explain the saying on the board. My husband and I went away for a long weekend with his family so we took off Thursday and Friday. That meant that Wednesday was our Friday that week. If we ever take a Friday off then we would be celebrating a Thursday Friday. Makes sense right?!?! I leave for work later than him so I wrote the message to surprise him when he came home and he loved it. Disregard the open beam to the left of the photo, we still need to dry wall since our demo.

For Thanksgiving this year my family is coming to us and we are hosting. Our families live about three hours away and usually we go to them for holidays. Any couple knows how tricky the holidays can be when it comes to splitting time. This year we really lucked out. We went away for a long weekend with his family last weekend and now my family will be here for Thanksgiving. I wanted to write something fun on the board for Thanksgiving. One of my favorite blogs is Little Baby Garvin. Finding her blog on pinterest really is what set my blog and chalkboard into motion. I totally stole one of her ideas for my own chalkboard for Thanksgiving.

Her board and design is definitely nicer than mine but I am not the most artistic person so I really am happy with the way it turned out.

I am off to continue my prep for having my family here for the holiday. I really can not wait to spend some quailtiy family time with everyone (especially my amazing little niece!!). I hope you all have a great and safe holiday!!

The beginning of creativity...the very beginning

Four blog posts in one day and then nothing for over a week. I am still trying to get a hang of things here. Lets get to business.

First things first I've made some throw pillows! When we purchased our couch a little over three years ago three of the most uncomfortable throw pillows came with it. Naturally we kept them up untill a week or so ago. They weren't totally terrible, they matched the couches. They were brown and had all these little frillies along the sides. Our dogs are always on the couch (totally spoiled, I know) and both Hailey and Lola were constantly getting stuck on the pillows. Hailey's collar got hooked into one of the frillies two weeks ago and couldn't get off the couch. Seems silly but that was my breaking point. I went to Target (my favorite store ever!!) and was surprised to see just how expensive throw pillows were. I figured I'd pop into the Joann's next door and see what I could find there. I found some pretty fabrics that weren't super comfortable but then I found some super comfortable fabric as well. I figured I could sew them together and have one side be pretty and the other cozy. I am a total lounger, I love to lay on my couch all the time (I sound really lazy) so comfort was super important.


 

Here are the materials, notice the super fluffy white material at the top of the patterns. I bought the blue on the left as my trial pillow.











I am posting this before I have completed the third pillow. The pillows are hand sewn. Perhaps if I keep sewing I will get a sewing machine but for now hand stitching it is.

 

I am loving how comfortable the reversable pillow is. I have to improve on some of my stitching but overall they are totally serving the purpose. Hailey and Lola are loving the comfort too!!

Chalkboard band wagon

On a majority of the blogs I have recently become hooked on they have tutorials for making your own chalkboard. There are also tutorials on Pinterest (another obsession of course). I went on the hunt for an awesome frame at my local thrift stores. I couldn't find any I wanted to use and was disappointed. Then I called a friend of mine who has an awesome etsy shop (http://www.etsy.com/shop/AmbersVintageShop). She invited me to check out some of her finds. I found what I was looking for!!

This awesome frame definitely needed some loving. There was a mirror in the frame and that was the first thing to go (I need to get better with my before pictures). I'm not sure what the design on the wood is, my best guess is some type of acrylic work (okay that was not my best guess, I really had no clue...that was Kevin's best guess). The design was chipping off but it really was beautiful. I went to Home Depot and picked up some silver spray paint with primer and was told that should help stop further chipping. I also picked up some chalkboard paint and some wall paneling. I spray painted the frame, cut the wall paneling to size (with Kevin's assistance) and painted that with the chalkboard paint. Here is the end result...

I am IN LOVE (this will most likely be my reaction to almost every end product picture I post). The instructions on the chalkboard paint says I need to wait three days before drawing on it. I'm going to pick up some colorful chalk before the end of the weekend and impatiently wait to write my first message.

About me

Hi! I'm Rachel, I have recently become obsessed with reading others blogs so I thought I would give it a try. I am not confident in my blogging abilities so we will see how this goes. I'm recently married to my amazing husband Kevin. We have two fur babies, Hailey (our real dog as we refer to her) and Lola (our 4 lb Chihuahua dauschend mix). We moved into our new home in July and are having fun making plans and knocking down walls (blogs to come).

From red to blue

You will quickly learn that I am incapable of coming up with clever titles for my blogs, again I apologize.

Our living room has one accent wall. When we moved in that wall was red.

My husband loved it...I thought it would grow on me. After being in the house one month I came to the conclusion that the red wall....had to go! It was driving me crazy, I was seeing red (corny, I know). It took an additional month of convincing but eventually Kevin agreed we could paint over it. I did not realize how indecisive I was until we needed to choose a new paint color. We knew we wanted a blue but choosing a blue proved to be quite the challenge.

                                              I call this photo "a picture of indecisiveness"

After a million paint samples and my husband saying "either or" four hundred thousand times I finally made a choice.

The picture was taken on my iPhone so the quality isn't great (and does not do the color justice) but I am IN LOVE. I think it turned out better than I could have imagined.


Home is where the dust is.

We moved into our new home in July. Overall the house is in great shape we just need to make it our own. I have to admit we haven't done much, until a few weeks ago that is. The first time we looked at the house one of our immediate ideas was to knock down the walls between the living room, dining room and kitchen. Well the walls are down and so is the dust!

 This is a view from my kitchen, thru that door way is our living room and on the other side of the wall with the painting is our dining room. We woke up one Saturday and decided now was a better time than any to take the wall out so we did just that.

This is a view from the living room (disregard my handsome husband in our dining room and the mess). We really wanted this level to be completely open.

One wall down one to go! We knew the smaller wall was a supporting wall and we would need a header installed. We wanted to get a few estimates on that prior to removing the sheet rock on that wall.

Once we realized that the estimates were reasonable and it was something we could afford to do the sheet rock came down.

My husband took a day off of work and our awesome carpenters came. They took out the remaining beams and installed our new header.

We are absolutely loving the new look. There is still a lot of work left to do but there is already such a difference. There are original wood floors in our living room and dining room. The kitchen is a laminate. Right now we are still deciding whether or not to re-finish and extend the wood floors or keep the wood floors in the living room but put down tile in the kitchen/dining room portion. Eventually we want to install a nice large island as well. For now my husband has began the process of putting up the new sheet rock and we have an electrician coming in a few days to re-wire some switches and outlets we had to move when we took the walls down. My family is coming in eight days for Thanksgiving (our first holiday hosting). Hopefully I can get rid of some of this never ending dust that is everywhere!!