Bedazzle...

So this is a long time coming. I finally finished a project that I, no joke, have been working on for almost a year. I first mentioned it here where my handsome puppy looked cute while working on it. Then again here when we first got our jigsaw to work on it, and lastly when I bought the fabric for it here. :)

This was a chair my Dad gave me that belonged to my Great Grandmother. We think it dates back to the 20's. It was in rough shape when we first got it but I thought it was a beautiful frame.

I put a lot of work into this. I did everything myself (with Ross' help of course :) but the cushion, which I had done at a re-upholsterer. I just picked it up yesterday.

Here's a quick summary of what was done.

Took all the fabric off and stripped it.

Re-stained it with Poly.

Made the bottom, used spray adhesive to put fabric on it, then nailed and glued it to the chair.

Used nail head to create a weave for the top of the chair.

And the only thing I had done was the cushion. I really didn't want to ruin the fabric and it just intimidated me. Maybe next time. I wish it was a bit more curved then boxy but I still love the result. :)

It goes perfect with our living room decor...

Next thing up - a few gallery walls :)


Cathy

Saltwater (100)...

This is my 100th post! I wish I had something awesome to post about other than pictures of a bathroom. Even though it's so cute!

Anyways - I was trying to find the perfect print for above the toilet in our downstairs bathroom and I pretty much gave up because I couldn't find anything that I loved and starting working on a different room.  I've been in the middle of getting the office somewhat put together (even though I said I wouldn't be getting to it) and I had bought a print for my husbands desk to frame but when it came in the colors matched the bathroom so perfectly I couldn't not put it in there.




















The pictures don't do it justice - I love it. And the saying is so true. It's from this Etsy seller who was featured in Oprah's magazine apparently. Love her shop.

I had bought these when we first moved in from Marshalls. I loved the color combo.

This was in our Kitchen in our last apartment. I just spray painted it quickly and hung it up on the wall opposite the toilet. 

Here's the print from far away. The colors go perfectly together.


I'm going for more of a simple look for in here so I consider this room done. :) Now like 15 more to go.


My re-upholsterer called me yesterday to let me know I could pick up another project I was working on that he helped me with. I can't wait to go get it!!! I've been working on it forever and it's finally done.


I hope everyone had a great Labor day weekend. Ross can finally leave the house so we spent it on the beach as a family.



It was his 28th birthday on Sunday so I bought him a wet suit so he could start surfing. It was kinda a present for the both of us ;)



Cathy

Corkulents...

Hey, just wanted to stop in and show a few little projects I've been working on. I'm still getting a few things together for our backyard and craigslist find post so that'll be this week sometime.

But I wanted to share a few little things that are fun and added some great color to my very WHITE rooms.

No painting is sad, but I've learned to add color in other ways.

Cue plants - I love greenery. Period. I try to incorporate it in every room. Succulents have gotten pretty popular in the design world as an accessory and I love them. So I decided to give it a try.

I had bought this cute coral pot from Home Goods before I left and I just picked up a couple little plants from Home Depot and arranged them together. This will be living in our living room to add to the coral, dark blue, and like a bluest green color that I haven't been able to name yet color scheme. :)

I also bought a new cork board for our Kitchen due to lack of room for this one. It came in this pretty blue color but I was looking for something a bit more neutral.

So I spray painted it dark grey! I love this color.

This is how it looks in the Kitchen - AKA perfection.

Today we worked on a Gallery wall in the Living room. 

I'll share that another day.....


Hope you had a great weekend!


Cathy

Before...

Hi Again,

I'm the one that literally has no excuse not to write, remember me?

Here are the before pics of the house, Finally!  We've done so many things that this doesn't even look like it anymore!!

So I'm gonna start with the downstairs.

Here's our front door. The stairs are right in front of you when you come in and the Living room is to the right.

Here's Med in the Living room. Which goes into the itty bitty Dining room.

Wittle dining area. There's a little hall off this room that goes into the downstairs bathroom.

Here's the hall with a closet in front of you. Bathroom to the right.

And here's the downstairs bathroom. We LOVE having two bathrooms. This one has a stand up shower.

From the Dining room you go into the Family room. Here's the wall closest to the Dining room.

And here's the oppsite wall. SUCH an awkward shaped room.  It's been really hard to arrange!

The Kitchen is open to the Family room.  Which I really love.  You can watch TV while you cook and you can have someone sitting on the couch and can still see them while you talk to them. Better pictures soon, this was the day we moved in.

And this is the walkway through the Kitchen to the back yard and garage. We have a washer and dryer where those boxes are now, which has been great to have right here in the house :)

Okay now to the upstairs... view from the top.

 Upstairs hallway. I'm gonna start from the far end moving to the left.

At the end of the hall there's a random "large closet". It's huge, I really don't know what I'm going to do with it. Right now Ross has all his army stuff in there and it's kinda his very own dressing room.  We might keep it that way. You're welcome babe. :)

Then we have a small office, which is full of boxes and Med's crate for now. I'd like to say this would be one of the first projects we'll get done so Ross can have a set place to do his homework but I don't see this being done until winter time. Maybe sooner though.

And then we have our oh so grand guest bedroom. Haha. I actually have some fun plans for this room and hope it'll be ready by Thanksgiving because I have a few people visiting then :)

And lastly we have the Master bedroom and bathroom. I actually really love our room. This will be one of the first finalized projects. We decided that we really want a nice place to be able to fall asleep in because we never did our room in our last apartment. Sooo we bought a new bed which is so comfy and I just ordered our very first bed frame since being married. I'm so excited for it to get here!!

This is actually the Master bath and the upstairs bath. It has two doors. One from our room and one from the hall. It's pretty big and it has dual sinks, which we LOVE :)

I feel like we're already done so much since we took these pictures!

I'll share the front and back yards in another post.  I'm so excited to share the process of making our house more our home :)


Next up - Craigslist finds and the back yard makeover (so far).


:)


Cathy

3000 miles...

It was quite the trip to get here. I figured I would share some of that before doing before pictures of our house or any little projects that we've been up to (which have been a few).

Dave, as previously stated, was nice enough to come out with me. I honestly wouldn't have been able to do that trip without him.  He drove most of the way and I literally would have gotten lost, or killed somewhere in the Midwest if he wasn't with me.

So we started our journey on a Thursday morning. We left New York around 9:30.

Here's Medved in his favorite spot of the whole trip. He would literally fight me whenever I tried to pull him in.

Dave's co-pilot. (bad IPhone pics)

Here is an Indiana sunset.

And a rainbow in Iowa.

I can't remember how long we drove for but it was over 30 hours. We felt great so we just kept going. We were in Omaha, Nebraska by the next morning. We ate breakfast there and continued on with the journey.


Here are the plains of Nebraska.

By Wyoming we were pretty convinced that we would make it the whole way without having to stop but ourAlternator didn't agree. Right around Laramie, Wyoming we had to stop and spend the night so it could be fixed.  We left around 6 the next morning.




Here's the sunrise the next day in Wyoming.

The next two pictures were through Wyoming too. I LOVED this state. There wasn't much there but it was golden, open and beautiful. I would love to own a ranch there one day.

Here's Med being a HAM in Utah. He couldn't get enough of the wind. At first I kept asking Dave if it was raining and then I would remind myself that I was getting Med's drool all over my face and arms. He was so funny and so good the whole trip. The 2nd picture is in Utah too, he was happy to get a little time out of the truck.

Here's Nevada, which I drove through, and is also very boring! Dave took Med out for a little game of fetch at a rest stop. It was so funny to watch because it was so hot and sandy, whenever Med ran to get the stick there wold be dirt flying up everywhere.

We stopped in Sacramento to spend the night because it was so late and because we thought only having a 3 hour drive in the morning would feel really good. 

This was our sight on our way to Monterey the next morning :) Gold like Wyoming, mountainous like Utah and a little green like New York.  It was perfect :)

And here's when we first drove through Seaside and Monterey :) First time I ever saw the Pacific.

We made it that Sunday morning and stayed in a hotel for two days until our house was ready for us.

A couple more pictures of the coastline for you to be jealous of ;) 

The weather is alot cooler then I expected and Monterey is more small town that I thought it would be but it's perfect for the year and a half we'll call it home :)

Before pictures of the house next!

Cathy