Oh August, what happened to you?

It's August 24th, how did that happen? This month has not been a great one in terms of blogging (although it was really awesome otherwise!)
Here's a rundown of the month
* I lost my camera for almost a month
* Found my camera and posted twice
* Went away on an awesome family vacation
* Came back and right away started full time work back in the classroom

And, that's where we are now. As I mentioned above, my school year started last week for teachers and then this week for students. I am back full time in teaching 1st grade for the first time since my older daughter was born. So, it's going to be quite the adjustment for all of us. Not sure where that leaves my home projects and blog, but we'll see. I hope to at least get a few things done a month. My mom told me today that it has been so long since I have posted that I might lose some followers....ha! Let's keep it real people, hard to lose people when there aren't that many to begin with!

Anyway, I do have something to share from the living room re-do. I took the frames from above the sofa and transformed them. Here are some before and after shots.

I painted the frames some glossy white, chose some decorative papers from my stash, flipped the mat over,got a new piece of glass cut and voila. Here we are!

Mirror, mirror on the wall

One evening after my dad and I tirelessly toiled cutting and hanging crown molding, my mom and I tackled  a little mirror redo. A few months ago, my friend and neighbor Melissa and I went yard saleing. I scored this great mirror for just 2 bucks!

I loved the shape and couldn't pass up that great price! Did you get a load of that awesome butterfly decal on the side? We put our heads together to try to decide what color to paint it. I didn't really want to do just plain white but didn't have much else on hand except grey! My mom suggested painting it blue first, then white and rubbing off some of the white to let the blue show through. So we went for it! I remembered that I had some blue craft paint from when I painted the canvas for the family room. That was too bright so we mixed it with white and made it a really pretty light blue/aqua.

This is the ugly green-yellow color that the mirror started as.

My mom found that the butterfly was just a sticker and she was able to scrape it off once it was wet from the paint.

We then sort of dry brushed the white on top. I painted it on and my mom brushed it off. I didn't get any good pictures of that. Here are some up close pictures of the details. I think you can see a little of the blue popping through. You can in person. My dad thinks we should paint it bright white - he thinks it looks dirty with the blue showing through. What do you think?

 And, here it is on the wall.

 I like it on the wall on the way to the door so we can check out how good we look when we leave!

Before Meets After

Anybody else watch Giuliana and Bill? I'm pretty certain that if Sherry Petersik read this blog, she would have totally gotten my reference to their E! show. She seems to have my same AWESOME taste in television viewing.

I digress...my before meets after has nothing to do with G and Bill actually...it's the before of my living room and the after of my living room. Love it!! I have given you enough text lately and no pics, so I am just going to show you pics!

Before:

During:

After:

I am so happy with the way it looks. My dad and I worked super hard for a week and it's great. We even were able to paint up the stairs and in the hallway upstairs. Loving it!! There are a few crafty things that my mom and I tackled for the room as well. I will hopefully post about them this week!

Insert Embarrassed Face

You can all (and again, by all I mean Mom, Di and maybe one other person) rest assured that I have found my camera! Here comes the embarrassed face part - um, it was in my bag. The whole time. Yeah, I swear, I did really look in there. To be fair, it was buried way down deep underneath Tinkerbell sunglasses, princess stickers, Hello Kitty paper, some crayons and hand sanitizer. Damn you deep pockets!

Anyway, so there you have it - it didn't magically disappear, it just vanished into the vortex of my summer bag. Now I can properly update you on my living room transformation. But not until tomorrow!

Dead Zone

It's really a bummer when you actually have projects to share but no means by which to do it! The camera hunt continues. The last thing I want to purchase is a new camera!

People, there are sofas to buy and rugs and chairs to refinish! So, here is what I am thinking. Too bad you don't know what the room looks like to decide if you like these things or not. Oh well...pretend, people, pretend!

And this rug...

Use your imagintations peeps!

Soooo....

I have been quite busy over here. My living room is finished. And it look awesome (in my humble opinion!!) I ended up choosing Harbor Gray, which was the original color choice I made way back. So 4 bottles of sample paint later, I was back to my first choice. Oh well, at least it was cheap sample paint.

It's the top color that I thought might look too blue and icy. I am happy to say that it certainly does not look icy and it actually feels warm.

There is so much to share with you - new color, crown molding, new painted mirror, new lamps. AWESOME!!

You must be wondering, "where are the pictures???" Well, they are in my camera, and my camera is MIA. I know I had it at my in-laws last weekend, and I am really hoping it is still there. (Big lump in my throat!) We did the work last week and then jetted off to NY, so there was no time in between to snap pics.

Stay tuned this week and I will hopefully have some pics to share. In the meantime, think about how awesome my living room might look if you could see it!