ummm...so cute

I saw this scripture case tutorial.....and knew I had to make one. For whatever reason....it took me MONTHS to get around to doing it. so finally...here it is.
Isn't it darling?!?

Painting Finally

Well as of this past December we've lived in our home 3 years. Our home was painted with a flat off white paint. Seriously, who paints a house with flat paint...builders...that's who...because its the cheapest thing to paint! UGGG. So this was a long time coming...but Ben and I HATE painting. So we've done a few rooms here and there. We've painted Alli's room before she was born, the spare bathroom upstairs, kitchen, hallway, and the master bathroom as well. Then we had our stairwell professionally painted because of the height. We have decided enough is enough...so below you can see the before picture of the hallway. We really love the red color but decided it didn't belong in the hallway...so now only the kitchen will remain red. So we primered the hall and then got on with the rest of the downstairs.
After of Hallway: top color is Behr - Toasted Almond: Bottom color is Behr - Chesnut
Where it looks white between the two colors is where we will be putting chair railing in the next few weeks!
Love love love love love! Aahhh...we painted from 7:30pm - 2am...eek! Long night but it was nice to get it all done in one night while Alli slept. Now all we need to paint are the remaining rooms upstairs. We are going to continue to use the toasted almond in the spare bedroom, chair rail the hallway upstairs just like downstairs hallway and then do toasted almond as well in the master on three of the walls. The wall behind the best we are going to accent with the color in the master suite which is a pretty blue color! Yay...almost done with paint!

BIG room transformation...

Let the transformations begin! I began thinking yesterday about how we can make our house functional with the current space and layout we are dealing with. Let's face it...our front entry room is AWKWARD! The room was designated by the builder as "dining." I'm not putting my dining room table in the entry room...not only that but I have four bookcases in there and a table wouldn't fit unless NO one ever sat in it. So that being said....how to use that space...

We currently have my "craft table" upstairs in the master because its the largest room in the house with extra space. But it was also having to serve the purpose of printer holder/office stuff. This made it NOT functional as a craft space. But we got rid of our previous desk to open our living room...and SO thankful we did! So I figured....Once we sell the sofa and chair from the front room (that we never sit in) then it would be a perfect spot for the roll top desk I've always wanted! This would keep all the office clutter hidden which would make me happy seeing as it would be in the front room. After researching some desks on craigslist, I quickly came to realize these desks are HUGE! So I had to alter the layout of where I wanted the desk to go since there are two walkways that come off the front room. The desk couldn't block either

I found a gem of a desk on craigslist for $200. These desks easily go for $800-1500 brand new. We offered $150 and the desk is well worth it! It is such a great addition and will be so functional for us. (Especially as Ben starts working towards his bachelors this coming month! EEK) ....so due to the size of the desk we've moved the sofa out into the garage...I intend to sell that beast within the next week or two if it kills me! We also moved one of the smallest book cases upstairs into the spare bedroom. Then on the large wall of the front room we have the desk with a bookcase on each side. The short wall that faces the front door has the largest book case and we will eventually put a parson chair there. Isn't it pretty??!?? The best part is the sell of the couch and chair will more than pay for the desk! Yay!

EEK projects!

Ok...the short and skinny....our house is OFF the market. While we would love a piece of property with more room to grow into, it appears it isn't in the cards right now. :) The biggest reason why is that the interest rate when up on us and the rate being so low is a prime reason why we would have been able to move up in house at this time. With the change in interest rate and the potential hit we would take in our equity to get out of the home, it did not make financial sense to sell at this time. So....we will better spend our time and money fixing up our current home to be a home we are very happy with.We have TONS of projects we "want" to do but they will be a major work in progress and I'm going to guess it could take a good year to get them all done. We'll see how it goes. I won't bore you all with the details of what we want to do unless you are curious... But one thing we MISS in this house is a fire place. We would LOVE a fireplace. I miss the mantle of a fireplace. Our current house really lacks places where I can decorate and make it feel "homey." Shannon is always doing such cute cute decorations on her mantle and I so wish I could do things like that. Well....today I saw a tutorial for a fake mantle...EEK I'm giddy. It's a take off of the Pottery Barn mantle shown here: I was browsing through some craft blogs a few moments ago and like answer to my decorative desires... I found TWO blogs that have made their own versions of this ledge at a MUCH cheaper cost than pottery barn's $400 price tag!! EEK Looks like I'm adding one more project to our to do list!

It's finished.

Well as mentioned before, I only lacked a little before finishing this magnet board for Alli. Today I hung it on her wall and added the magnets. Voila! She loves it! I know this board will be used for years to come and will grow with her as she does. I love watching her run up to the board and scream puppy as she sees the puppy magnet...So cute! The funny thing is...every animal is puppy as far as Alli's concerned. We have to work on learning our animals.
On a side note...Alli and I got a virus this past week and were out of it for a few days. During this time Alli really LOVED watching her My Baby Can Read videos. She now wants to watch them NONSTOP whenever we are downstairs. It has it's benefits though. Since the repetition, Alli has learned the following:

Body parts: hand, feet, eyes, knees, head, belly button

Songs: Eentsy Weentsy Spider (with hand motions), Old McDonald Had a Farm (when she sees the cow she screams "MOOOO", I'm a Little TeaPot (she will bend over when you are supposed to 'tip me over and pour me out')

She's also learned Arms up, and shake head yes and no.

Fabric covered magnet board

Well as I said in my previous post. I wanted to make a magnet board for Alli's room. I found a horribly hideous framed picture at goodwill and went to work repurposing it. I still have some work to do to it because it really needed a primer before I painted it. So I have to fix that and find some cute hooks or nobs to screw into the wall to hang it by. Won't it be so cute for her to put all her animal magnets on?!? I love it.