My Mom, the Artist

I like to draw. But my mom CAN draw. And she CAN paint. For real. She majored in Fine Arts in college and taught high school and middle school art classes for around 10 years (I think?). And did I tell you she CAN draw and paint? Very well? Very talented at these skills? Well, you get the idea.

I’ve always told her that she should take more time to focus on her art and possibly sell some of her work. I’ve suggested her to set up an etsy shop and maybe sell some of her artwork. But she has always been too busy to really sit down and do art.

Until now! She is currently a very happy housewife and has more time on her hands… So, she asked me if I wanted her to paint one of the art that I coveted after in one of my moodboards.

This one. It costs $319.99 for a stretched canvas print. I thought maybe we could buy it in like 82 years of saving up, or finding something similar at a lower cost, but Mom came to our rescue when she offered to paint it!

YES MOM THANK YOU YES!

Shortly after her sweet offer, I stopped by Hobby Lobby looking for something-something and happened to stop by the canvas aisle. I decided to look at the prices and was like WHOA at the prices. I mean, I don’t remember the exact prices, but they ranged from $50 for tiny canvases to $100 for bigger ones. And we wanted a BIG one for our game room, so I was really disappointed that, even with mom doing the painting, it would be an expensive piece of art.

BUT MOM CAME TO THE RESCUE… again!

She laughed at my disappointment and said that she already took care of it. She bought a roll of canvas paint and stretched it over a wood frame herself, which cost like pennies compared to buying them already stretched out. That college degree really came in handy.

It’s not done yet, but it is in progress:

I CAN’T WAIT! It already has a spot in our game room ready and waiting for this awesomeness.

Compare the original and Mom’s version -

Told you she was good.

It’s actually perfect, because she was the one who introduced us to the deliciousness that is Agave Nectar.

I Guess We Really Do Love Teal

You already know that our office is teal. And you know that we plan to paint our interior doors black.

But what about our front door?

We did think about, as did millions of houseowners around the world, painting our front door a nice RED… but after a short drive around the neighborhood, we said NO because everybody was doing it already.

Last weekend we were walking around North Austin and we passed this random door in a shopping center:

Love! Paint our front door teal! Perfect!

Here’s a picture of our front door..

Blahhhh.

Oh – I haven’t shown you guys what our house looks like from the outside. Here it is!

But we’re not sure about HOA rules… I hope teal doors will be allowed…

Another option is this softer color, a robin-egg blue:

Miles Reed’s door, Domino Magazine, November 2009 – picture taken from here.

What do you think? Bold teal? Soft blue?

What color is YOUR front door? Do you love it? Hate it? Eh it?

Guest Bedroom Inspiration (finally)

So. We will have a guest staying with us for a while starting in March.

So. January is the month of the office. February will be the month of the guest bedroom.

So. We played with some ideas back on our first moodboard. Eh, I know, but…

So. I looked for good inspiration pictures but it is hard to find orangey inspiration.

So. I stumbled into this great blog – Decor Demon – and found this picture:

So. Inspiration tucked in our back pocket, here we go!

Can February start already?

I have high hopes for this lamp

We got this lamp at TJ Maxx for $30. I guess it smells as good as it looks, otherwise I don’t know what Vaquero’s doing in this picture…

Five years later Soon, I want to spray paint it a shade of teal/blue and put it on our future console table for our entryway. I was inspired to do this after seeing this picture:

Little Green Notebook

Yes, I’ve been referring to that blog a lot lately. I read like every post on that blog recently and fell in love. That girl is great and very creative! So I am going to STEAL a lot from her. Just being honest here.

Back to my high hopes for the new lamp. $30 and like $5 for some spray paint is a great deal compared to these lamps…

Amazon, 97.28

Lamps Plus, $207.91

Lamps Plus, $151.91

Target, 149.99

Lamps are expensive! I’ll stick to TJ Maxx and thrift shops, thankyouverymuch.

It’s Coming Together…

White office boxes from IKEA living prettily with a Philadelphia Eagles troll…

A $2 lamp thrift find with a hard-to-find bulb requirement hanging out with The Thinker… (should I paint the statue white?)

A cheery trash can from The Container Store (that store is dangerous)…

And, of course, an office staple – a globe that was a steal from TJ Maxx.

What’s left? The chair upholstery project and the window treatments… then we’re done until after the wood floors are put in!

The reveal should come in a few weeks, probably in February…

Yes, some of these things are different than what I put on our moodboard but when we saw cheaper and cuter options in other places when we were shopping, we went for it!

Homemade Window Shades

We’ve been thinking and thinking about our windows for a while now. The plastic mini-blinds just had to go and soon. But many window blinds and shades cost a pretty penny and we knew we couldn’t get away with curtains unless we wanted to see our cats acting like Tarzan. So our options were limited and we were beginning to think that we would have to buy faux wooden blinds – pretty expensive for something so boring.

Until I saw this tutorial at Little Green Notebook! How to make shades out of plastic mini-blinds! So after a trip to two fabric stores, we picked out a fun fabric that we liked and got only two yard so we could experiment before committing.

The step-by-step directions can be found at the Little Green Notebook, but you can get an idea of how the shade was made by the picture below – which you will also see Nick playing on-line poker and Tala conspiring how to be allowed to lay on the fabric.

The final verdict? It isn’t perfect, which bothers me since I really tried my best to do everything right – but it’s not bad. A couple of things I’ve learned – work on hard floor, not on the carpet; add another fabric to the back so the “seams” can’t be seen; and get the cats outta there. (We tried putting them in the bedroom, but they somehow broke out. Nick thought of the garage, their favorite playground, and that worked perfectly).

I think it would look SO MUCH BETTER with trim around the windows, which we plan to add sometime soon. But I think the new shades will push us to do that project sooner than later. Like, next month. Here’s proof that trim will look GOOD:

Much better. Can’t wait to add that trim.

We’ll go to the fabric store again soon to buy more yards of the fabric and figure out the second fabric to put in the back. Perhaps just a simple black fabric? Or black-out fabric? We’ll figure it out.

I was looking at the fabric yesterday and asked Nick, “Is that fabric too young? Should we try to get something a bit more older?” He said, “We’ll redecorate later, like when we’re 40. I don’t want to decorate our house like we’re 40 already.” So true…

In any case, it is MUCH better than what we were working with before:

Want to see more DIY projects by other bloggers? Go here.

From Functional To Fab (at least, I hope)

Finally, we have nightstands.

They aren’t bad – but they could be so much cuter. For $10 each, we’re happy with the purchase. But since the recent Craig’s List debacle, we decided that we can’t buy anything “fixer-upper” anymore until we finish all the projects around here. So, we’d better get crackin’ on these nightstands.

A few ideas:

1. Put silver leaf on the dressers – from The Green Notebook

2. Paint them white. Picture white nightstands with a large black upholstered bed frame. Would that work? With gray lamps?

click on picture for source

3. Paint them a punchy color, like lime green. Do you think that would work if we painted our wall purple? Too much? What about if we stick to gray on the wall? Hmm.

4. Or – paint them white, but paint the inside lime green?

click picture for source

5. Paint it black. Boring?

click picture for source

6. Paint it white, but leave some of the wood peeking out in a cool design…

via design*sponge

and

via design*sponge

7. I would love to go crazy with wallpaper but Nick has already vetoed that option. I can at least show you a cute example -

via design*sponge

8. Whatever option we decide to go with, I think it would be really cute if we could add some type of bedding for our cats, like this…

via design*sponge

I Quit Craig’s List

After getting so inspired by Little Green Notebook and her crafty Craig’s List hunting skills and Nuestra Vida Dulce’s fun Craig’s List searches in cities requested by her readers, I started stalking the website.

As you know, I got that cute desk chair — we also got more-functional-than-fab nightstands that cost only $10 each. Feeling like a master at Craig’s List, I hunted stealthy for one of the following: a cool console table for our entryway, a comfy chair for our office/library, and endtables for our living room.

I annoyed Nick more than 40 times last week, but at last – on a lazy saturday, Nick and I agreed to buy this cute-looking chair that was grayish blue with a brown trim that we planned to paint white. Only six months old, the ad said. Perfect… and only for $40? And they would deliver it for $10.

Excited, we waited and we went ahead and hung up our new mirror (TJ Maxx rocks.. more on that later) in our entryway and waited… And finally, a van pulled up.

A old, broken down van.  A van with two ratty mattresses on top. Two women came out of the van, looking tired and wearing old t-shirts. The older woman, who might be the mom, pulled out the chair from the back of her van. She put it down on the road and gestured to it, all proud.

It was dirty. And ugly. And not even grayish blue – it was closer to blue jean blue. And did I mention that it was dirty? No way this thing was six months old.

I looked at Nick, fully expecting him to say, “Please!” But instead, he said, “Okay, cool,” with a smile. Was I seeing the chair all wrong? Was it really not that bad?

I pulled out the $50 from my pocket and gave it to her. She seemed a bit shocked that I just gave the money to her. I didn’t know what to say – I felt bad that she had driven all this way here and I felt like she might have needed the money. Whatever, I’m obviously not good at bartering.

Nick and I carried it into the house and I could see the bottom of it was dirty – and there were leaves. Leaves?

I cleaned up the bottom immediately and started to tackle cleaning the upholstery, but I decided to spot test it with my favorite carpet cleaner. A small spot. When I wiped it off with white rag, it was unbelievable how much dirt ended up on the rag from a small spot on the back of the chair.

I did not want to touch it anymore. I walked to Nick and told him that it was filthy and that we would have to just reupholster it. Then for the rest of the night, I just sat, thinking what I could have done with $50 and reading blogs about other people’s decorating successes. That was fun.

But my sweet husband, the next day he agreed to go to a couple of fabric stores with me and actually got into it. We had a lot of fun looking at different fabrics and even though we haven’t found the perfect fabric for that ugly chair, I’m feeling a bit better about it now.

(I removed the cushion)

Well, not 100% yet. But I’ll try looking it as a good opportunity to practice my reupholstering skills. Well, if I have any skills. I don’t know yet. I haven’t reupholstered anything yet. Not even anything small. I hope I won’t waste a lot of money in the progress. GULP.

In all – I’m way too soft-hearted and wimpy to do Craig’s List. I think I’ll stick to thrift shops – we just discovered a really nice one last Sunday and I can’t wait to go back there…

What Five Bucks Can Get You

After months and months of searching for a cute desk chair on Craig’s List, we finally found the perfect candidate a few weeks ago. But we just can’t complete ANY home improvement/decor project without some kind of procrastination, so I thought this chair would be gone by the time I finally called the thrift store last weekend.

Whew, they still had it! And for $10. Off we went and we discovered a really gold mine in that little thrift store. We definitely will be back. And the store worker there was so nice – he immediately reduced the price to $5 as we were looking at the chair.

I really love the caramel color of the leather (a bit lighter and yellower than in this picture), but unfortunately it can’t be salvaged. We are on the lookout for upholstery fabric for the chair, preferably with some yellow in it. Seems like that’s a bit hard to find… Here’s what I found after a few hours of searching on the ‘net.

1. Chelsea Maize, Tonic Living; 2. Spade Damask in Sand, Joel Dewberry, Ebay; 3. Bloom in Sand, Joel Dewberry, Ebay; 4. Mustard yellow twill, Ebay; 5. Norma Organia, Tonic Living.

I think I like the first one the best. But maybe we should just go for a solid yellow fabric rather than a patterned one, to best show off the shape of the chair? I’ll take my time and be on the lookout for good fabrics this month since we plan to do all the purchasing and reupholstering (glup, my first one) next month. This month is still dedicated to organizing the office and research for something SO BIG coming up…

Do you know of other sources of upholstery fabric I could check out? That would be a big help! So far, the chair is much more comfy than it looks and I’m happy sitting in our beautiful teal office and doing my work there.

Tala loves that chair too – she slept on me for an hour while I worked last Sunday.

Makin’ the Office Pretty

The office’s bones are up, but now it needs to get some makeup.

Some ideas:

1. The colors. The walls are already teal, so we’ll be bringing in lots of white and yellow accesories with some gray to tie in with the rest of the house. 2. Cool art. On sale. But I am not sure if it would look good with our window treatments…? Otherwise, we would snatch it up RIGHT AWAY. 3. Pillow. For the loveseat that we plan to put in the room. 4. Another pillow. 5. We just want the wastebasket. 6. We already have this. 7. White boxes to organize our junk. 8. Cute yellow lamp. But this is a bit expensive so we will be on the lookout for a lamp with similar lines and just paint it yellow! 9. Flor gray rug tiles. 10. A magnetic frame for our magnetic boards. 11. Cool hexapods. Nick’s a math teacher, so this would be perfect.

Is it obvious that I love CB2 and their prices? Yeah, but we haven’t ordered anything from them yet. We almost ordered everything from CB2 from this moodboard an hour ago, but we decided to wait a bit and be sure of our decisions before making any purchases. After all, January just started. We have a house budget for every month, so we have to make good choices.

I’m finding it really hard to decide what to buy each month. Like, for this month, should we focus on buying bigger items such as a loveseat (probably from Craig’s List for now), shelves for the closet (we decided to go with Billy bookcases and hack them a bit to fit our closet), and boring stuff like filing cabinets and a side table, or should we buy decorative accessories and smile as the office smiles back at us?

I just can’t wait to actually bring a moodboard to life. I think this one will be the first one to be completed!