kitchen is finished! :)

hello! 

this weekend, we have officially finished the kitchen and dining room! (well, until i decide that i actually do want to repaint the walls, which i'm already leaning towards now.)

we painted below the chair rail the same color that was above the rail, so now our kitchen is very yellow! i guess i can't complain, it was so dark before we did anything and we certainly don't have that problem now! :)

i wanted to put something up on our wall in the dining room, but had a hard time figuring out what i wanted. the final product? framed napkins! and i LOVE them! i cut each of the napkins to show different parts, resulting in three coordinating prints! :)

my sister, J, gave me this cool chalkboard as a housewarming present. it is a cabinet door that has been repainted red, and then painted with chalkboard paint. i LOVE this! it was originally going to go in my laundry room, but once i saw it in person, i decided it was too cute to be hidden. so... it is now my menu board! 

other than that, the weekend has been spent fixing the fence and gate so our dog can't get out, fixing fans, light switches, ya know... fun things like that. 

since we are officially done with the kitchen, i wanted to show some before and after pictures...

before:

 after:

before:

after:

before:

after:

before:

after:

so with the kitchen being done, what's next? well, we're going to repaint the living room probably first, and eventually the guest bedroom and office. we're also planning on tackling the yard sometime in june. we'll be sure to keep everyone updated!

crafty projects!

hello everyone! i can't believe it's been a month and a half since i've posted. well, looking back on the past month and a half, i guess i can believe it. the hubs and i have been super busy - one of my best friend's wedding, girls weekend with my sisters, the hubs' trips to mississippi (had to sing the little song to make sure i spelled that right!) and canada, and the hubs' brother's high school graduation in oklahoma (where the wind comes sweeping down the plains!). we have done a few random projects since the last time i posted, so i thought i would go ahead and update you on those since we are hoping to knock out some bigger projects this next weekend. (hey four day weekend!)

hmm, first off, we'll start with the guest bathroom. our guest bathroom is perfect for us - it's small, but we don't have kids who would be fighting over it. and we only have guests occasionally. however, when my mom stayed with us, she decided it was lacking some storage space. which i agreed with, i just hadn't spent much time trying to figure out how to fix that problem. mom (and sisters!) to the rescue! when my mom was visiting one of my sisters (L), she saw that L had done this (or something similar) in her guest bathroom, so mom took another sister (J) with her later to hobby lobby to help pick out some baskets. they did such a great job! i love them! :) mom brought the baskets to me when she came to help decorate above the cabinets, but we didn't have time to put them up that week.

here's our before picture:

the madre showing me just how she wanted the baskets:

and the final project! yay for towel storage! :)

for a few security projects (don't worry, i have more crafty projects!)...

the previous owners took the door that led from the garage into the house with them. why? who knows?!? so we bought a new door and ash installed it. we still need to install the molding around the door, which will probably happen this next weekend. look at him work!

we had been planning to put 2 inch blinds in our dining room and living room, but hadn't quite gotten to that yet. however, we had a creeper experience, so we quickly decided we needed something over our windows. we went ghetto for one night and threw up a sheet, but then bought and installed blinds the next day.

ghetto sheet...

finishing the installation...

back to crafts!

we have received a lot of housewarming cards, birthday cards, birthday party invitations, wedding invitations, etc. and we used to put them all on the refrigerator. there's just something about a stainless steel fridge that made me not want to put all of these invitations on there, so i wanted to come up with a cool alternative. i didn't realize this at the time, but i stole the idea from pinterest (i saw it on one of my boards after i purchased this).

easter weekend, ash and i went to the warrenton antique festival with my family, and the only thing i was looking for was a shutter. (and that's the only thing i left with too!) 

i tied some burlap-y ribbon to the shutter and have it hanging from the top of the cabinet. this cabinet is actually the pantry and you see this side as you walk into the kitchen. 

clothespins don't work so well, so i found some clips and attached them to the shutter.

and then i found all of the cards we had around the house and added them to the shutter!

there is one more crafty project that i've done, but i'm going to wait until they're actually being displayed in our house before i post about that one. (fingers crossed - this weekend!) keywords: framed napkins.

okay, well, i think you're pretty much up to date now! hopefully we'll have some new posts for you this weekend!