Gallery Wall

I have a post all ready about my kitchen makeover, but first, I wanted to do another quick post.  The Inspired Room is doing a Gallery Wall party so I thought I would share mine!
This is a wall in our family room where we have started a gallery of frames with pictures we have taken on international mission trips we have been on.  There are two pics my husband took when he was in Brazil and Panama.  The other pic is one I took of a beautiful little girl I met in Africa.  We hope to add many more pics as the years go by.

These next pics show the grouping a little better (taken before I painted that old dresser and before we got hardwood flooring put in).

I added a cream plate with "faith" on it in vinyl.

I also made this little sign out of a piece of wood.  The words are from an awesome song by our church worship ministry called, I See the Poor.

I pray this pictures will remind us of our times in these other countries and the mark it made on our lives.

We have another gallery wall on the other side of the room.  Our family rules poster (found here) is in the middle surrounded by family portraits.

P.S. Did you see those GORGEOUS floors???!!! : ) Love them!  Oh, and I promise I will post about the kitchen tomorrow!


We'll take your truth and we'll take your justice to this broken land
take your salvation to every single nation.
We want the world to know, there's no one like You, Lord.
Every nation is Yours.


Get your copy of I See the Poor or shoot, just download the whole album!  You won't  regret it! Go here.

Kid's Bathroom

I must say that this bathroom was done A LONG time ago. I just never posted pics. This is the upstairs bathroom shared by the kids. It used to look like this:

Yep, pretty pitiful. I attempted putting up a little of the kids art and a colorful lamp, but that's about it! I mean, the toothpaste is out and the toilet lid is up. Pretty gross.

These vintage drapes were my inspiration. I found them at a thrift shop about 4 years ago and fell in love with the graphic design and colors.

I cut off the pleated top of the curtains and added small grommets for the shower hooks to loop through.

The walls were painted a warm grey (another of my oops paint finds!). I did a board and batten treatment on the bottom half of the wall and painted it a glossy white

I put the kids' paintings back in the room. I also added the pair of owls, also painted a glossy white. The towel rack is a board I found at Hobby Lobby that I washed with some teal paint and added some thrifted brass hooks.

I had my two oldest kids paint these canvases. I just told them what colors to use.

A gentle reminder for them to brush their teeth.

I also changed out the cabinet knobs. Nothing too fancy, but an upgrade from builder basic.

I decorated this bathroom for less than $60. It works for me!
If only it were always this clean! : )

Old Bonus Room

Didn't I mention that I was painting my kitchen cabinets? Yeah, well, they are painted, but the distressing is still not done. So no pics, yet. Sorry.

In my last post, I showed part of our recent house rearrange which included moving both of the boys to the previous bonus room. The bonus room was a tough room that I finally got looking the way I wanted it ... and then we decided to put the boys in there. I had some pics I took of the room in it's former life that I thought I would share.

I only have one before pic and it is a horrible quality since I took them with my phone. But, hey that just makes for an even better after, huh? : ) You'll also notice that I did not clean up for the pic... mainly because I took it right before we tore the room apart to paint and add chair rail molding. (By the way, the paint was a $5 gallon of oops paint from Lowe's. Half my house is painted with oops paint. )

Before:

After:

(I know, just the mess off the floor makes a difference!) We pretty much kept the same layout we had before but moved the kids area behind the couch to cut out on some that visual mess I was just mentioning.

This is the play area behind the couch. I love love love that rug. I scored it at Target on super clearance for around 30 bucks about a year ago.

Office area:

And, one of my favorite spots. I wanted to do this embroidery hoop art somewhere and this seemed to be a perfect spot. After scoring the hoops at a yard sale for like a hundred of them for $1, I decided to go for it. I think I added one more on the right side by the wall after taking this pic, though. The green lamps came from Walmart for $15 a piece and the shades were from Ross for like $4.99 each. This dresser and the armoire in the previous picture both were in our bedroom at some point.

It was a great bonus room. It is way more functional now as the boys' room, though!

Recovering a Seat Cushion

Okay, it's not that hard, but if you've never recovered a seat cushion before, here's how to do it:

When I posted about my dining room transformation, I asked you not to look at the two head chairs with the non-complimentary blue chair cushions.

I was looking for some neutral fabric to recover those chairs. I thought about using a dropcloth because it would match the curtains and would be inexpensive. I kind of wanted fabric with a little more texture, however. I lucked up and found the perfect fabric at Old Time Pottery for about 5 bucks a yard. (They had some great designer fabrics there that pretty much made me want to redo my entire house, but I refrained.)

So, here's how you recover a chair:

1. Cut your fabric. Remember to leave enough room to fold it over the cushion with extra fabric to spare.

2. Start by pulling the fabric taught (but not so tight that the shape of the cushion changes) and put one staple in the middle of each side. Staple top, bottom and then side to side.

3. Staple all around the edges leaving the corners for last.

There are 2 options for corners. You can do a gathered corner or a pleated corner.

I went for the pleated corner. Just make sure which ever way you do it, both corners match.

I gathered the back corners because it was more of a rounded edge and they are less visible.

4. Trim off excess fabric, make sure any screw holes are accessible and reattach to chairs!

Much, much better.

Linking here.

Dining Room and Living Room Updates

One of the things I enjoy about blogging is sharing projects we have going on around the house. I know there are a gazillion houses out there way more beautiful than mine and there are even more people out there with more design skills than me. Having said that, who wants to redo something in your house and not show it to somebody? : ) Blogging inspires me to get things checked off my list and hopefully a few others will be inspired along the way.

That being said, I have made some updates in my dining room and living room recently.

We painted the living room chocolate brown soon after moving in. It was a horrid burgundy and we loved the chocolate color of our previous dining room, so we went for it. Well, let's just say in a small dining room, dark walls, dark furniture and dark floors make for a...well DARK room!

I forgot to mention that I also had dark drapes.

I had some light aqua paint leftover from our accent wall in the living room which is open to the dining room, so one evening, I started painting. It only took a few hours since we have panel molding and only one wall with no openings/windows. It was already looking better! I looked and looked for the perfect fabric for new drapes and ended up just using drop cloths like everyone else on the planet. (***Tip- if you are using dropcloths for drapes, buy them at Home Depot. The ones at Lowe's have seams in them! ***) Love them. I decided to fold the tops of mine over to create some interest and to keep from having to hem them.

We also changed the layout of the dining room furniture. It seems much more balanced now having the china cabinet on the main focal wall. And to be honest, we did it because it makes traffic flow to and from the kitchen much better!

So, on to the pics...

BEFORE:

and AFTER:

I L.O.V.E. the new light airy feeling. I really wanted to do something to break up my all matchy matchy dining set. So, I sold all my chairs but 2 on craigslist and made enough money to buy these beauties.

Because they are cream, they also lighten things up and they are washable. I've already washed paint and crayon off of them. I think they will make it with my kids.

Here's the view looking in from the kitchen.

And, another one looking from the living room.

Now, you may have noticed that the two wooden upholstered chairs are covered in a fabric that doesn't quite go with the rest of the room. Don't worry, I have already taken care of that. I just haven't uploaded the pics, yet.

I still want to make, or find a cute runner for the table and I'd like to change out the chandelier with either a simple chrome one with white shades or a drum shade pendant. One day it will be finished, right? Probably not! I'm okay with that, though!

Now, the living room has gone through many different furniture arrangements.
Here's a pic showing the old curtains that matched the dining room ones. The lady that bought my dining room chairs ended up buying these also!

We used to have the couch on this long wall, but I never liked it.

Please excuse the bad, blurry pics. (The camera class I took, is definitely paying off! These were taken BEFORE I took the class! : ))

Here's a pic with the new drop cloth curtains.

I like the couch floating in the room. Something I don't love: the book cases. It's so hard for them to not look cluttery. I needed something big on that wall, though and that's all I have, so for now, it has to work.

Do you see that print over the chair? That's one of my favorite Christmas presents that Kris got me!! It's a family rules poster and you can find it here.

One day, I'd really like to get a sectional for this room. But, this is how we live in it right now. When we moved to this house in Oct of 09, we had moved 3 times in 3 years. When you move that much, it is hard for all your furniture to work from house to house. I think that's one reason that my house keeps evolving! It's a fun process, though!

Linking here and here.

A bunch of plates

I bought these at Goodwill for 25 -50 cents a piece.

I've been wanting to do something over my kitchen cabinets, but didn't want it to be cluttery, so I decided to try some plates. I saw this post from the Nester before I went out and bought 13 $2 plate hangers. Thank you, Nester. So, I did this:

Yep, I hot-glued paper clips on the backs of the plates. There is a possibility that the paper clips won't hold, but if they don't and the plates fall and break, I've only lost a quarter!

I love the way it turned out. I like how you can see the plates peeking out above the cabinets.

I'm posting to Rhoda's party!