Giving Thanks

In this time of instant gratification in the form of Pinterest, and Intagram, and blogs, I wanted to take a moment to give thanks for all of my blessings including my unfinished and dated home.  It is so easy to get caught up in wanting everything to be beautiful and perfect right now and to forget that just the state of owning or even having a home is a blessing not enjoyed by everyone.

via

Yes, it would be nice to have all my rooms be organized and beautifully decorated but instead I have 2 beautiful children that I want to provide the best for, a wonderful husband who is willing to go along with most of my harebrained schemes, a healthy family including 2 sets of grandparents to my children, who are willing and able to spend time with them, a home big enough for all of us to be comfortable, and enough money to care for us all.

via

I want to try to take this whole holiday season to remember that we are not judged by how beautifully our home is designed, our families are going to be more affected by the feeling in our home.  No one will know nor should they care, whether your chandelier came from Circa, Pottery Barn, Lowe's, or even the local Restore.  Let's all take the time and energy we could spend on renovating and decorating and spend it on building the important things.  I hope our children will remember growing up in a nice home, but most importantly I want them to remember having a comfortable home and to cultivate in them an attitude of gratitude.

via

Ideas for a new master bedroom

So, a friend of mine moved into a new house not too long ago and decided that she wanted to redo her bedroom.  She has a pretty classic, slightly cottage, southern style but asked for a little help pulling things together.

The room isn't huge and has 2 off centered windows.  She just bought a new, dark wood bed that she would like to reuse but needs new nightstands.  She also really likes her green, lattice print curtains that she hopes to reuse as well as an upholstered armchair in a red and green paisley.

(a picture from the listing when she purchased the house)

I put together 2 ideas for her to consider and can't wait to see if she does anything like either of them!

One Room Challenge Reveal! Thank goodness!

For the sake of getting our laundry room done we are participating in Linda's One Room Challenge.  In 6 weeks we have totally transformed this room into something beautiful and functional!  And we have gotten to follow along on some other great projects to keep us motivated!

The laundry room/mudroom/pantry is done and it is even better than I anticipated!

We now have the folding shelf I have been wanting!  The hubby built a knee wall and we just balanced a piece of plywood between that and a support on the far wall.  We painted the plywood with chalkboard paint to give it a nice, matte black finish.  We debated using a peg system on the underside to keep it in place but make sure it was easily removable but once we had it in place we realized it didn't move easily so just left it as is.  If we decide it is moving too much at any point we may put the pegs in place.  I also didn't want all the space on the counter to get taken up with detergent, etc. so we got some black brackets and a marble threshold and made a little shelf.

For the sink area the hubs built a support for an Ikea Domsjo and we fronted it with a decorative cutout.  We went this route because we wanted to be able to house the litter box under it and behind a skirt.  We will see how the cat handles the skirt, we may end up making two panels that we can leave open most of the time.  We used some large scale, granite tiles as the counter top around the sink because I thought that would be more durable with the sink there.  I found them at Home Depot one day when I was there for work and was fascinated by them.  I had thought about using them as the counter tops throughout the room but when I showed them to the hubby he was nervous about cutting them.  That was fine because the plywood did end up being cheaper.  But by the time we went back to get the tiles they were on clearance and weren't a bad price.  We got a commercial style, sprayer faucet because I thought that might be the most useful in the laundry.

Years ago we bought a wall cabinet at Habitat Restore that we thought about using in the bathroom remodel at our old house.  It turned out to be too wide so we have been saving it since.  It completely worked here though with a shelf above and a rod off the side.  I air dry most of my clothes so that was non-negotiable.

On the other side of the room we replaced the pantry closet with some drawer cabinets and shelves above.  I like keeping most of the stuff we use regularly in clear or glass jars so open shelves weren't really a big deal but we kept the drawers for less attractive but still necessary stuff like snack foods and bread.

We also added another base cabinet as a place to put our recycling and any random things we need to keep in here.  Again all the counter tops on this side are chalkboard painted plywood.  We had the bench in there before and liked it as a place to drop things like bags and the cat likes to sleep there too.  At some point I want to have a box cushion sewn for it but the budget for that wasn't here right now.

We will probably hang some art at some point and maybe add a lamp but for now we are so happy with how great the space looks!  I thoroughly anticipate it will function as well as it looks too!

I can't wait to see how everyone else's projects turned out!  I'm sure everyone is as happy as we are to be done with their space!

One Room Challenge Week 5! The end is in sight!

For the sake of getting our laundry room done we have taken on Linda's One Room Challenge.  In 6 weeks we hope to transform this room into something functional and pretty.  And in the meantime we get to follow along with a bunch of other projects as well.

I am starting to feel that this should possibly be my husband's blog because other than coming up with the ideas, he is doing everything for this project.  I think it helps that this gets him out of "keep an eye on the kids" duty but he is really busting it on this.

Last Friday night my mother took our 2 year old daughter to spend the night at her house which meant that we could both put some effort into things Saturday morning.  And we got to sleep late!  (If 7:30 counts as late!)

Hubs got the sink cabinet fully installed and a wall cabinet hung above it, got the counter tops installed, built the pantry shelves and case, finished up trimming everything out, and got the sink installed.  The counter top above the washer and dryer isn't fully installed because we plan on using a peg system to hold it in place so that it is fully removable should a situation arise where we need to quickly get at the back of either appliance!

We have started some of the cabinet and shelf painting to increase our odds that the paint will have time to cure before we put stuff away.

This final week we have to focus on getting the wall shelf and rod over the washer/dryer installed and trimmed out, installing the faucet, finishing painting all the cabinets, installing hardware, and putting everything away!  It's a good thing we have the eleventh off for Veteran's Day!

During the little downtime we have this week you know I will be checking out what everyone else is up to!