Bigger Girls Bedroom...the smaller bedroom

I LOVE this room people.  Seriously.

There isn't much to say, the pictures will do all the talking.  We (well...actually my sister Emily and her wonderful husband Dave) painted over the super dark paint and started with a fresh, white, blank slate.

SO...here we go!

Before:

After:

 

It looks SO MUCH BIGGER with that dark paint gone.  The only things I added or changed in this room was I spray painted the book shelves and dressers (I don't really have any before pictures...the dressers were white and the book shelves were two different colors of wood), and did the stencil on the walls (the girls wanted to help, so there are some smudges and places the paint went out of the lines...but really only I notice it.  And now you would too if you came to my house because you'd know to look for it.)  Everything else we already had.

And there you have it.  In the last picture, that little door on the right side is a pocket door into a bathroom, makes it pretty convenient for them.  They love their room and are constantly in there playing and reading.  It's the perfect room for the older girls.

Kitchen Counter Faux Paint Redo

So...I totally lied.  I am not ready to reveal the family room yet.  Marty ended up getting a horrible stomach bug that had him completely down for the count on Saturday, so we didn't get the project in the family room finished.

Of course, I am brilliant and ended up doing another project, that was WAY more time consuming and complicated.

I faux painted my kitchen counters.

So, here is a little play by play of how this happened...in case you are wondering.  I do have to apologize that many of the pictures are from my cell phone - another instance of texting pictures to my family to show them how crazy I am.

First thing we did was lightly sand the counters - we used 220 grit sandpaper, just enough to take the shine off.  We then taped everything off and got to priming.  I just used a small foam roller to get this, and had to use a small brush to get in some of the corners.

We used KILZ brand, water-based tintable primer.  We had it tinted a light tan, because that was the base color of the granite sample I was trying to copy.

First coat of primer going on, goodbye green!

One counter done

During the project

We ended up needing two coats of primer to cover the dark green counters.  This is after one coat:

 And after two coats

Here it is, completely primed (at 11:45 p.m.  If you are going to try this yourself, don't start at 9 p.m., just a word of advise)

The next morning I got to working on dabbing on the colors.  Pretty soon Marty was hit with that pretty awful stomach bug.  I would also not recommend trying to do this with four small children while your husband is out of commission.  It took FOREVER (just over 7 hours - which is equal to forever when you're standing in a kitchen dabbing paint) and there was lots of whining and crying - from all parties involved.

I ended up using 8 different colors of acrylic craft paint and mixing a couple colors to get the right combination.  These aren't all different colors, I got 2 of every small bottle - and this isn't all the paint I used.

I used sea sponges to get the job done.

I took my little granite sample to the craft store and spent a good 30 minutes picking out the colors.  I was quite worried as I got going - much like the blogs I had read about how to do this warned - but kept plugging along.

First color...I was scared. 

Two colors...looking slightly better

Seven colors in...feeling more confident.

And then the final color completed it!

After I got the colors how I wanted, we started the clear coat.  I chose Polycrillic semi-gloss clear coat for the first three coats, then I switched to two coats of high gloss to get it a little shinier. I just put this on using a foam spongy brush. (Those craft brushes with the little wooden dowel type handle and they're a black sponge thing)

 

 

 
 

And there you have it!  I am just about finished getting the kitchen all put together for the whole kitchen reveal (not that there's really  much more than these counters...).  But we can't put anything on the counters for a few more days, and there's a couple other decor things I want to do to finish up.

Even though it was very time consuming and tedious, I'm very glad I did this project.
The whole thing cost right around $100, and it completely made over my kitchen.

I'm one happy girl!

Randomness...

I'm not big on words right now.  I have a lot of emotions that are all over the place, so rather than get into any of that, I'm going to share some random pictures from the last little bit.

I am SO close to having the family room completely put together...it should be done this weekend after our last project, so that post will be coming soon.  But until then...here are a few other things from around the homestead.  

Molly LOVES watching movies on my bed while I take a shower.  This one day the other girls were drawn in by the movie and I came out of the bathroom to find this little moment.

In my entryway, there is this cubby thing.  I got this all put together a while back, but just haven't posted any pictures.  The vase and "dead plants" as my kids call it, were some of the gems left behind in the shed from the previous owners, it fit the space perfectly...and I happen to like the dead plants.  The tile is something a woman made for each of us after Ben passed away, and the statue is a brother and sister.

I was determined to make sure this summer was a great one, so this fun toy found its way to our house.  The girls LOVE it.  We're looking forward to having the cousins come visit and play on it with us as well.

 And a little sneak peak at what's happening to my mantle in the family room... 

The End.

Little Girls Bedroom

*Before we continue, I need to just say that the only reason I am doing these posts showing our house is because we are away from family and they want to see how our house is coming together.  I do not believe I have any talent in decorating, and I'm not trying to show off...I was starting to feel a little like these were "Look at how awesome I am at making stuff"...which is not at all how I feel.  Seriously, purely for documenting and showing our families how it's coming together.  And with that being said...we can continue*

Here is the little girls bedroom...Addison and Molly are "the little girls".

This room doubles as a bedroom and toy room, because it's the bigger bedroom.  We chose to put the little girls in this room because the other bedroom is connected to a bathroom and closer to the kitchen - which makes it noisier and not as condusive for naps and earlier bed times.

This room was already painted bright pink on one wall, and light pink on the other walls, and we chose to stick with it.  It bothers me a little that the crib, changing table, Addison's bed, and the glider are all different colors of wood, and I had considered painting them all to match.  But then I decided that in about a year from now, both of the girls will be ready to move up to the next size bed and we will probably retire these pieces.  So I'll just wait until then to get things matching.  I also feel that way about how we have the furniture laid out.  It's kind of the only way to make it work for now, but once they're ready to move up to new beds, we'll probably do bunkbeds and free up the space.

So here are the pictures...

Before (pictures from the listing):

After:

Before:

After:

Excuse the frog humidifier, I also haven't decided if I'm going to add anything else to this wall or not yet...we shall see.

Before:

After:

Here are a couple close ups of the fun little projects I did yesterday:

Fun tissue paper pom poms above the crib 

Dandelions

The dandelions are a stencil.  Of course I only took pictures during the process with my cell phone, because I was texting pictures to my sisters showing them how crazy I have become.

It was a cool stencil that you just tape to the wall and paint with a roller.  I used acrylic craft paint and so it was all dry within 5 minutes, plus it covered the bright pink walls just fine.  This whole project took me maybe an hour, and I did it with all the kids around and Marty at work.  Really...it's that easy!

The finished dandelions with the blowing seeds.

I LOVE the cute picture hanging above the changing table and toddler bed.  It is this framed:

I put it together on picmonkey.com and printed it out nice and big at Costco.

So there we have it, one more room done!