New doors!

Our house is technically 3 bedrooms plus an office/den and a flex/dining room - according to the floor plan. The office is a pretty large room with a nice closet so the only reason it's not a bedroom is because it's missing a door. The flex room is a LARGE room that we weren't quite sure what we were going to do with when we moved in. We knew we did not want a large formal dining room - to us that's a waste of space since we have a spacious breakfast nook. What we did know is that we wanted to add a door to the office so we could make it a bedroom if needed (or so I can close the office door if I need to). We were still undecided on the purpose of the flex room (other than the tumbling room that we refer to it as haha) but we did know we wanted to add french doors. Justin's dad owns his own construction company so we were lucky enough to have him take time from his busy schedule to come down here and build us some walls and install some doors.

We LOVE how they turned out! We've now decided to move my office from the office to the flex room. I have a new desk ordered and can't wait to start designing this room now! 

Before

During

After

Notice my little helper??

The Long Awaited Gallery Wall

This project has been 6+ months in the making...actually- probably more. Before we moved I decided I wanted to do some sort of gallery wall, but in our old house I was going to have to take something off a wall to do it. When we moved in I decided I wanted to do a gallery wall in the entry way and started collecting frames. Our friend Magan (who took our wonderful family/Christmas card pictures) gave us one of our pictures in a pretty white frame for Christmas which inspired me to do an all white frame gallery wall. Now, if you are trying to decide between black and white frames (or some kind of mix) let me just tell you now that white frames are NOT the easiest thing to come by! It took me a few months but I collected enough frames to get going. 

When I was envisioning this wall I also started envisioning it painted some other color than the tan that's all over the house...then I got ambitious and decided I was going to stencil it! I bought the stencil back in April but was terrified to use it. Before we went on our vacation we (mostly Justin - I am not trusted with paint in this house....or probably outside this house either) painted the wall grey. For some reason, after not sleeping for 26ish hours and then only sleeping for about 5, I thought it was a good idea to get my stencil on. I got about halfway through and needed to clean the stencil and was about to have a nervous breakdown so I decided to quit for the day. I finished on Sunday and it felt SO GOOD to have this part finally done! 

Before/During

I don't have any before pictures but the wall was just tan - nothing exciting

This is the same Glidden Pebble Grey paint we used in the old house - still love this grey!

Marrakech Trellis Stencil - from Cutting Edge Stencils

Stenciling complete!
Over a month later and after the construction was done in the office/flex rooms I decided it was time to lay out the frames to see if I needed anymore. Magan came over and helped me lay it all out - it was a lot easier than I thought it would be but I'm sure it was because of her help! 

Then I let it sit there for a few weeks before I finally decided that Sunday was the day - I would at least start hanging up the frames. It only took me 30-45 minutes and it was done! I can't believe I waited so long to hang the frames. I am so ridiculously happy with how it turned out that every time I walk by I stop to admire it.

I cut out the paper that the frames came wrapped in to match the size of the frames, marked where I needed to put the whole in the wall and taped them where I wanted to go. The great thing about a gallery wall is if the picture ends up a hair off from where you wanted it - you can't tell!

After

For the prints for the frames I decided to do a mix of pictures of us (engagement, wedding, family pics), vacation pictures, "T"s, and a canvas with a saying I loved! I ordered the prints from mpix and was super impressed with the speed and quality of all of the pictures! I will definitely be ordering my prints from there from now on. There are some floating cabinets from Ikea that we are going to get to install along this wall and then the hall will be complete...unless I can persuade Justin to let me hang a chandelier here...still working on that one :) Overall, I'm super proud of this project because other than painting the wall solid grey - I did almost all of the work. Feels gratifying to see the finished product :)

Master Bathroom Update

Justin and I have been constantly working on house project since we moved in and we are finally getting some of them complete! We painted our master bathroom back in February or March but there were a few finishing touches we had to finish. The last thing was a new valence that my mom made for us. My mom and I picked out the fabric at JoAnn's and she made the drapery. She finished it a few weeks back and we've had the curtain rod since May but finally got around to hanging it yesterday. I'm so happy with how everything turned out! I saw the wall color on pinterest and had to really search on the blog it linked to to find the actual blog post and color of the wall but it was worth the effort. It's definitely a brighter-bolder color than we usually choose but I'm glad we branched out on this one. We decided to stick with white accents for the decoration - which matches the white tile of the tub and shower - very spa like! 

We still have one (maybe 2) project left in here but it's a big one - change the cabinet color. We've talked about refinishing them the way we did our guest bathroom but this house does not have raised vanities like we put in our last house (sad day!) so we don't want to do all the work and then decide we want to put new cabinets in the bathroom so we are just holding out for now. We also want to frame the mirror but that will have to wait until we make the cabinet decision also.

Before

After

Mom made this valence too :)

Let's Play Ball!

This past week we have had a LOT of rain and cooler temperatures - in the 80's! (in July, what??) so it has been a nice change. On Sunday afternoon it was really overcast outside and the weather was soo nice so we went outside with the dogs and played ball for a while. Hunter would literally chase his ball until he falls over dead if we let him, so in the summer we have to limit his ball time outside to like 10 minutes. He was able to play for 45 on Sunday followed by a long walk around the neighborhood...happy dogs! We try and get Lexie to fetch the ball - she's getting better but she usually waits until Hunter comes back with it and then tries to steal it. We give her a different ball and she usually goes off and chews it by herself.