Friday, October 29, 2010

Fun with Leaves






Today was a beautiful, crisp day here in Seattle...my son decided to go rake leaves in the backyard. It was a good day, we roasted his pumpkin seeds too! YUM! Hope you are enjoying Fall as much as we are!
Mareen

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Welcome Halloween

We are ready for Halloween! My son can hardly wait! He's going to be a "zombie" soccer player! Just thought I'd show you our front porch this year. Nothing super original but fun none the less!













Thanks for visiting!
Mareen




Spooky Entry Table

Due to current construction at our home, this is as far as it will go this Halloween in the decorating department. For my son's sake, I managed to throw together a little something for him. Ignore me in the background taking the picture. I could have photoshopped me out of it but ah, well.....



A few fun things from one of my favorite sites, http://graphicsfairy.blogspot.com/

This handsome man really needed this purple bow tie~





Happy decorating!
Mareen


Candy Corn Banner

Several years ago when my children were much smaller, we made a candy corn banner for our front porch. I have loved it ever since! It's colorful, fun and easy!

Your list:

black ribbon or twine
hole punch
felt in white, yellow and orange
hot glue gun
template

First you need to make a template. I used the front of a drawing tablet (thin cardboard). I just drew the shape of a piece of candy corn on it and cut it out.



I then cut 5 pieces of white felt the exact shape and size of my template.


I cut 5 pieces of the orange to be the "center" of your candy corn. I hot glued the orange pieces on to the white ones. You can see the layer sizes through the back here.


Next came the yellow pieces. I cut them to fit the tops of my corn and hot glued them on top of the orange ones.



I hole punched the top corners of each piece of corn and tied the black ribbon on to connect them together.



And Wa La! A cute, CHEAP and fun banner to greet your tricker treaters!


Mareen


Friday, October 22, 2010

Quick and fun changes!

I love spray paint! It's an addiction, I admit. I love to reuse, recycle and repurpose items in my home. It saves TONS of money and you feel good when you've brought something back to life with a new look!

In my "old" shelf display, I had these very chunky gold candles with a brown candle holders. I repainted the holders black, of course! I'm pretty impatient when it comes to decorating, especially when I have a "vision" in my mind. So, instead of waiting or going out to buy sheet music at some thrift store, I printed some off of the computer. I cut the sheet music to fit my candles, wrapping them like a present. And Wah La! New and cute candles for my shelves!

I also painted my very boring wicker basket black to anchor the bottom shelf. Cheap and easy!









Thanks for looking!
Mareen

Updated Shelves

Now the AFTER!

I decided to paint the inside of the shelves white so that any item I displayed would show up better. My Mr. K will be putting beadboard in the back of each shelf once his travel schedule allows. I will paint that white as well.

As you can see in the BEFORE photo, all of my picture frames were brown. I painted them all black and now they display only black and white photos. I also decided to add, for fun, my grandmother's old metal toy telephone and Mr. K's Uncle Bernie's world war II binoculars!














Remember the BEFORE:







Let's start with the paint...


After trying COUNTLESS variations of "neutral" paint, I finally decided on this one. It's a Martha Stewart color called "Carton". I was worried that it would be too dark, but by comparison to my Butter yellow, everything did. So we decided to go for it, and I must admit, I LOVE IT! It's very rich but still warm and looks great against our mill work! It has a fair amount of green in it which doesn't come across in this photo. The paint looks more gold during the day.

Our family room


So here is a picture of my family room BEFORE. I have taken countless and clearer photos of this room over the years with no one in it and do you think I could lay my hands on any of them? (Next to do item, organize photos..) So, minus my parent's friends in the room, you can see fairly well how it looked.

Thursday, October 21, 2010

Family Room Makeover - Phase One


I've been busy! We had a roof leak in our home which prompted half of our Formal Living Room to be torn down to the studs and base floor. So, since we strive in chaos, I decided to redo our family room and kitchen area since our home was already a disaster.

First, I had to find just the right paint. Our room was very french country with walls painted in Butter from Restoration Hardware. I have loved this paint for the last 7 years. However, we were ready for a change. I'm headed towards Pottery Barn person slams into eclectic person.

Here's a BEFORE picture of our breakfast nook: