What I'm Up to Wednesday

It's time to share another room with you guys...but first, I must whine a bit.  You see, I'm going to share with you our master bathroom and if there is one thing I truly, truly miss about our old house, it is the master bathroom.  Our old bathroom was HUGE.  There was an insane amount of storage, plus a jacuzzi tub and tons of space.  OMG!  Oh, how I do miss that bathroom every day.

But I digress...our new master bathroom is really just a normal bathroom.  The storage is minuscule, but we've made it work as best we can.  It's not my favorite room, but I'm pleasantly pleased with how the decorating has turned out.

All of the decor has been reused from the old house with added paint to make it match the color scheme.

The paintings in this picture are what Tony and I did at Wine&Palette.  The pictures needed some coral, so I made some a few adjustments to brighten it up a bit.

BEFORE

AFTER

We have a cute cabinet above the toilet.  I still have changes I want to make to it, like...I can't stand the mirrors...so they will be going away once I figure out what I'm going to do instead.  But the storage is nice and the baskets are cute.

The metal art work was actually in our entry at the old house.  I added the sky blue and coral paint to make it match and I think it turned out great.  

The cross in this picture was actually brown.  I decided it needed to "pop!" 

The added color and decorating make this room much more enjoyable.  Eventually I'll forget about my past life with a jacuzzi tub...right?  

What I'm Up to Wednesday

It's time for another room share with you guys!  Our master bedroom is considerably smaller in our new home, so we've had to get creative.  But I love how it has turned out.  The before pics are from the listing, but you'll be able to get the idea of what we had to work with.

 

You'll see that we put our bed on the full wall instead of the wall with the windows.  It just seemed like a better use of the space.  I initially struggled with the window coverings...if you'll notice the windows are right in the corner.  So, to make the windows look properly spaced, I hung the curtains off center.  This makes the windows look larger than they actually are.

 

 

We don't have room for a bookcase, so I decided an upside down shelf above the door would great!  Tony made the shelves and the shelf brackets serve as the bookends.  I love, love, love how it turned out. 

All of the decorative elements are from our other house.  But I painted a lot of them to give them a fresh new look.

This candle holder was spray painted blue....

 

We found this frame in the attic...I painted it coral and added the vinyl for some sweet & simple art...

 

My bracelets are hung on a painted mug holder that I got off amazon....

 

And my earrings are hung on a frame that I hung chicken wire inside....the frame is hung from shower curtain brackets.  The brackets are also holding my necklaces...

I love how our bedroom has turned out.  I catch myself lying in bed and just looking around the room.  It is such a comfy peaceful place!

What I'm Up to Wednesday

It's time for me to share our new house with you guys.  There are still a few remaining projects, but overall we are completely moved in!  I love our little house and am beyond thankful for it.  Aside from the 50% cut in our house payment, the smaller house brings us together more frequently than the larger house did. 

For the reveal, I'm going to share a room each week and why not start with one of my favorites...the laundry room.  Yep!  I just said the laundry room.  I've always wanted a decorated laundry room.  We walk through it multiple times a day so why not make it fun and inviting.

Here is what it looked like before....

 

Pretty boring, huh?  And it was seriously lacking in storage space.

 

(***I need to throw in a quick disclaimer...anywhere I say "we", I really mean Tony.  I may have had most of the ideas, but he was the muscle behind each one.***)

 

The first thing we did was rip out the shelf and put in a cabinet.  The cabinet was in my craft room at the old house.  It was originally part of my grandparents china hutch too.  So this cabinet has been re-purposed on several occasions.  We added a bar for hanging clothes and additional shelving on either side of the cabinet as well.

 

The metal canisters were my great grandmother's and they are great for holding our dryer sheets and laundry pods. 

 

Behind the laundry room door was an empty nook.  There were no shelves or anything.  Just an empty cut out space.  So, Tony re-purposed the wood from the livingroom wall hanging that I had made for the old house.  He painted it and gave us more storage shelves.

 

 

I love the yellow and grey and am so glad I spent the time to decorate this room.  I actually enjoy doing laundry a little bit more now.

What I'm Up to Wednesday

With all of the stress at work, I've found that I need to use the creative side of my brain to relieve some of the "pressure".  So, a few weeks ago, I buckled down and cleaned my craft room.  It was a pit too.  And the biggest problem was just my lack of putting things back when I'm done.

But now that it is clean, I've been able to stretch my creative side some.  I could find no better use of my creativity than making things for Nicole's birthday.  Have you heard of Happy Mail?  If not, click HERE...basically anything less than 13oz can be mailed through the USPS.  You wouldn't believe the stuff that can be mailed.  So, I got busy and sent her several fun packages throughout the week of her birthday.  Of course, I didn't take pics...ugh!  But here are some that inspired me.

I am most excited about her "main" present though.  You know that Nicole and I share a passion for books, so when I came across booksi by Rich Neeley Designs on Etsy, I knew I would eventually have to get one for her.  While I was at her house visiting, I noticed that she charges her cell phone in the kitchen, so the books needed to be yellow.  I worked with the Neeley's and this is what we came up with.....

I like it, but it just didn't have that "wow" factor like some of their other books.  But because of wanting the bright yellow, I was pretty limited.  So I had it shipped to my house and I gussied it up a bit.  I love how it turned out and can't wait to see it in action.

Rich Neeley Designs offered a discount code for you guys...if you use the link below and enter my email address in the notes section of your order than you'll get 15% off your booksi.  You have to use the link and the discount code displayed...and for me to get referral credit you have to put my email in the note.

http://richneeleydesigns.refr.cc/SQ27NHM

Here are some pictures of my other favorites designs that they have.  It's gonna be hard to decide when I finally make my order.

Anyways...back to the reason for the post.  It has been wonderful to be creative and to let myself feel the energy that can flow.  Now I just need to keep it up so I don't get over stressed. 

What I'm Up to Wednesday

Since moving into this house (over 6 years ago), I have struggled with a central place to keep our family calendar, et al.  The first problem was that the stainless steel on our refrigerator is not magnetic...who knew?  I tried putting everything on the side and it was just too much "out of sight out of mind". 

So, I tried using velcro and command strips and put everything on the front.  Which brings me to the second problem...clutter.  Ugh!  Seriously, I don't like a cluttered looking refrigerator.

I've been searching and trying to figure out a way to make a "Family Command Center" and my friend Pinterest really has inspired me.  So this weekend, I finally got everything together and came up with this....

I absolutely love it!  It is clean and organized, but still has personality to it.

I think the calendar is my absolute favorite.  I ordered the digital image from Beyer Design on Etsy.  Then I sent it to mpix and had it printed on mat board for less than $15.  I got a sale frame at Hobby Lobby, some dry erase markers and voila...a dry erase calendar!  Just write on the glass and it makes a perfect dry erase board.

I also love the chore boards.  I ordered them from Groopdealz, but you can get the boards from More Than a Memory on Etsy as well.  Another cheap open frame from Hobby Lobby and I have myself a new way to track the chores for Q&A!

The two prints that you see are pretty dang adorable if you ask me.  The Heart and Hands print is another Groopdealz purchase....also from Etsy.  You can get one from Le Papier Studio.  And the I Love Us print is a printable I found on a Pinterest and printed myself.  You can find the printable HERE.  I could also have printed it through a photo developer, but decided it would look just fine on normal paper....that and I didn't have the patience to wait.

I love the finished look of the area and am so darn proud of it!  I hope that maybe I've inspired some of you to become a little organized as well.  Now, off I go to work on another disorganized part of my house...my bedroom! 

***All of the information in this post is my own personal opinion.  I wasn't paid by any of the retailers mentioned.  It would be nice if I would've been though.***

What I'm Up to Wednesday (and a Giveaway!!)

I have finally got myself a Pinterest account and I have been pinning like a mad woman!  It is so dang addictive.  I've enjoyed Pinterest in the past, but this is my first time to just click "pin it" instead of saving it in some other place.  One of my recent pins are fabric covered bins.  I love how together corresponding baskets can make an area look, but it can get pretty expensive.  So, when I found these, I just knew I would have to make them.  (If you decide you want to make them too, you can click HERE to see the full tutorial.)

So, on Friday, I bought the supplies and decided to spend the weekend making my own beautiful set.

And I knew exactly where I wanted them...my bathroom cabinet.  This cabinet has been seriously neglected.



The baskets were pretty easy and took about 1/2 a yard of fabric each.  The messy part was the spray adhesive, but I really don't think there is another adhesive type that would work as well.  I got the baskets at Dollar Tree and the fabric at Hobby Lobby (30% off)....each basket averaged about $5 to make.  That's not too shabby...considering they would be about $15 - $20 each at Target.

I love how the baskets turned out.  I added chalk signs to make it a little cuter...they are wooden tags painted with chalk board paint!  Love it!

So, in all of that clutter was a slew of samples...some from Birchbox, some from random sample requests I've sent and some that I picked up in random places.  But I haven't used these samples yet, so I've decided to share with you guys.  It's GIVEAWAY time!!!!  You will win all of the samples you see in the picture below...there is just about everything that you might want to try.

So, how do you win?  Well, you MUST be a follower of Becky's Babbles...then just leave me a comment about what your addicted to...cause I'm obviously addicted to beauty samples.  The giveaway will run until midnight on Tuesday, February 12th.  On Wednesday, I will announce the winner.  Good luck!

Halloween Happiness

We had actually had a free weekend between our Owasso competition and the Union competition.  So, I took full advantage and gave the house a deep clean and finally got my Halloween decorations put up. 

I absolutely love Halloween.  I love the colors, the weather, the spookiness, the comfort food...I just love it all! 

I started in the dining room...which is kinda funny, since I just got the dining room decorated for everyday use...hehehe.  But hey, it's time to take it all down and make the room spooky.

I covered my tree picture with some cute orange and black fabric and then added this cute Boo banner that I found at Gordman's for $4.  I love how this room turned out.

For my mantel, I put scrapbook paper in the window panes and then added this cute bat banner kit that I found at Michael's.  I love the contrast of the black bats and the white barn window.

(Now, I just need to host a really fun Halloween party!  Yep....I'll do that sometime in January when we have another free weekend...hehehe.)

Dining Room Done!

Do you remember that Tony painted my dining room for me as my birthday gift?  Believe it or not, I have finally gotten it decorated the way I want.  Man, I struggled with finding inspiration and making this room something I really liked.  But I think I have finally accomplished the task.

BEFORE

AFTER