{ Our New Master Bedroom }

 I guess I kind of have a black and white theme going on.  I love the branches in the vase on the dresser.

This is a huge master bedroom compared to what we used to have.  We put our huge entertainment center on this wall.  I'm kind of blind so now I can see the TV from my bed.  It is kind of nice. 

I really like the middle pillow on my bed.  I just got it at Home Goods.  I think it ties all of the bedding together.

These bookcases used to be in my living room.  I love that they fill up this whole wall and feels kind of like a library. I love to read.

Here's a close up on my bookcase accessories.

The bedroom is done.  I am going to hang a chandelier in the closet that Jamie got at garage sale and couldn't use.   I already put a large ottoman in the center.  My closet is HUGE!  If I ever get it looking cute and done I will post some pictures. 

Have a spooky holiday weekend!

{ More of the New House }

In this new house, we have a living room with huge vaulted ceilings.  I don't know what to do with these, therefore I ignore them and decorate like they aren't there.

I had a huge wall to fill with not much furniture so we added some cheap plates from home goods to fill in a little extra space.  I like how they  turned out.

I love my neat little typewriter I found at a consignment store.  The skeleton hand is only there for Halloween.  I love that too!

Here's more living room. Our dog George didn't want to wake up and get out of the picture.

I am very excited to have a fireplace again.  I haven't tried to light it yet.  I hope it is working.  We don't get to use them much here in Las Vegas, but I love to have fires going in the winter.

Here you can see the big spot I need to fill going to garage sales. I want to find a game and puzzle table and chairs. Our family loves puzzles and I would love to have one going all the time.

This is the dining room next to the kitchen. As you can see there is still some work to be done in here.  I want to make curtains and get a huge rug made. Right now it has kind of that echo that comes when you have all hard surfaces in a room.

I have always loved this urn and it has been in my garage for at least 2 years. I was so happy that Jamie found a good spot for it. I will probably put some mercury glass ornaments with the greenery for Christmas.  The table was my husbands grandmothers.  I have never found the perfect place to put it. I love when I can use things that are passed down.

A friend of mine gave me this luggage.  Her mother took these on her honeymoon back in the 1940's.  They are so cute because they are monogrammed with her initials.

It's all coming along, I am starting to feel more like this is home.

Happy Halloween!!!

{ My New Kitchen }

We just moved into our new house this week. Before we moved in, we decided to fix up the kitchen. There are a couple of things left to finish, but for the most part we are done.  Here are a few of the pictures of my cute new kitchen.  I loooove how it's turning out. 

 Here are a few before pictures. The kitchen looked okay, but there were not enough cabinets and it looked a little dated with the stock builder cabinets. 

There was some wasted space on this wall.  I decided to add a wall of cabinets here to get some more storage.

 Here's the after.......

Here's what we did:
1. We bought stock cabinets from Lowes for under the window and added them onto the wall. 
2. We painted all the cabinets including the island.to look like wood.(Thanks again to April and Mary for being willling to help me paint another kitchen.)
3. Put new hardware on the cabinets.
4. Removed the wine rack on the island and made it into a shelf.
5. Put new granite on the outside counters with a new sink and faucet that I found on Overstock for a great price.
6. Put new marble on the island. We removed a foot on the right side to give us more space in front of the new cabinets.
7. Added a great new light fixture that I found on CSN above the island (only $103 w/free shipping!). We used a light kit from Lowes to replace the can light.)
8. To top it all off, we got new stainless steel appliances.

But one of my favorite things is the new open shelving I added on that empty wall. I love to take something old and repurpose it and that's just what I did.

I bought this hutch top (which had a base also that I will show in a later post.)  I bought both for $20 at a garage sale.  Everyone told me I was crazy because it really did look like junk.  I love junk and I love a great deal.  Here is the before picture of the shelf. 

 I started by sanding as much of the old paint off as I could.  I removed the cabinet doors then added beadboard on the back and added a little trim to the edge to finish it.  I then put a shelf on the bottom.  I painted the whole thing with white paint and sanded off all of the edges and the middles of the shelves. I tried to take off enough paint to give it some character.  I then painted the whole thing with a glaze and rubbed off a bit to add some age. I added some brackets for the bottom and painted, sanded, and glazed them to match the shelf.

Here's another look at that big empty wall...

I hung it on the wall with some big screws making sure I hit some studs.  I definately didn't want it to come crashing down full of my cute things.

April stayed long enough to help me accessorize. That is the fun part.

We're almost finished. I am waiting for my white subway tile backsplash to be finished. I'd like to get some new blinds and my third barstool is getting a new seat so it can join the other two. Also, sometime in the future, we will get new flooring.

I'm so happy with how it turned out! It's a great start for our new home and I look forward to working on the rest of the house.

{I'm Trying}

I'm not sure if the title of this post refers to my sad lack of Fall/Halloween decorating in years past, or if it refers to my attempts to contribute more to the blog so Jamie isn't the one who always has to post. (Either one applies, I suppose.) But yes, in years gone by I have made only pathetic attempts at decorating for the season. So as my kid get older I thought I should really TRY to be a little more enthusiastic for their sakes. Besides, I like to keep them a little of kilter, it keeps them on their toes! ("Mom, are you feeling okay?")

Here goes:

This is my window box. I generally add pumpkins in it every year since it looks so naked when it's empty, but this year I added white pumpkins. I like 'em!

Here's the front door. Nothing really spectacular here, in fact I need to get out and fix the spiderweb since the wind kind of knocked it down. I don't go real crazy for Halloween specifically, I generally keep it more for Fall so I can keep it up through Thanksgiving (I know, lazy decorator), but I am trying to add a few Halloween touched here and there.

I'm also a bit sad that we've had such a warm Fall which is, of course, a silly thing to be bummed about, but it's delayed a lot of my plants from turning (like my hydrangia above). I like the "Free" decorating of fall leaves. Now for the inside:

This is the table by my entry. I bought the cute covered plate thingy from Sheri's friend Mary when I was visiting recently (Thanks Mary for giving her up, I love it!) The pot came from Sheri as well. I'm such a scrounger!

Here's the living room coffee table, (I know the pillows aren't fluffed in the background, but hey, this was spur of the moment this morning. Just keepin' it real.) Also, as a side note, I recently made the chess board which I may post about someday. Like it?

Again keepin' it real here, this is the centerpiece in my office/dining room. Nothing spectacular because it needs to be easily moveable for when I'm doing projects.

Kitchen. Not much, sorry!

Light in the dining area. Don't love the fixture, but the spiderwebs and spiders are great! And don't you love the "authentic" dust on the ball at the bottom? Sigh. I guess I should take care of that eventually.

Dining room table with my son eating breakfast in the background. What's cuter the decoration or the kid? I know my choice!

I painted an old frame black and used a printable off a blog for the picture. This table backs my family room couches. See...

I made this garland a couple of weeks ago. I got myself a Cricket machine for 1/2 Off at Roberts (Can you believe it!), and had to give 'er a whirl. I used a garland idea from a girls weekend we had a couple of years back. I thought and thought about what it would say, and then got really creative and decided on "halloween".

Here she is on my mantel. I used twine to string it because that's what I had on hand, but eventually I will trade it out with black ribbon. (Like next year probably, 'cause that's just the way I roll)

Finally, what mantel would be complete without a skull bleeding from his eye sockets. This was my son's contribution. He made it at scouts. What are they teaching them over there?!?! Just kidding. I think.

Happy Halloween!

{How Did You Spend Your Monday Evening?}

We Decorated Sugar Cookies for Halloween. Even my Sweet Hubby made one.

What do you think?