Gallery Art for Living Room

While I was snapping pictures of our half bath update I shared here, I took some pictures of some little updates to our living room.  We're still lacking a lot in this room to give it the cozy, personal touch to it, but I think the gallery wall helped us get a lot closer to personalizing our space!

 The canvas print was only $55 and this included tax and shipping.  I used a groupon from MyPix2.com.  I had pretty low expectations after reading some reviews on google from the company, but my print turned out better than expected.  It just took over a month to arrive, but for the price, I didn't mind.

I don't have pictures in one of the frames yet, but I'm really happy with the scale of everything with the room and couch.  When I work on gallery art, I always places it out in different orientations on the floor, and I measure my width and height I want on my wall to define my boundaries.  These are the other two layouts I was considering, and I asked the help of a few friends to vote.  They all agreed on the layout we ended up with which made my decision easy.  Thanks ladies!

I also picked up this nice size garden stool from Joss & Main for one side of the sectional.

We added this antique black pedestal table we ordered from overstock to have between the arm chairs.  It really ties in with the black of our gallery frames and the black floor lamp.

We have an upholstered ottoman that we'll be using as a coffee table coming soon.  I still haven't found the pillows for the room or the console table for the other wall.  So stay tuned!

I am loving the view out all of our back windows this spring.  It's the first time we've had to enjoy spring in this house, and the view is so pretty.  It's hard for me to capture it.  So thankful for this home and God's beauty!  I am just so grateful everytime I look out these windows.

Happy Spring!

Affordable Half Bath Update

One day last week, hubby and I decided to run to Lowe's to see if we could find some tools to take down the builder grade mirror in our half bath.  All the updating (priming, painting, and new light fixture) hinged on getting that mirror down.  Armed with suction handles and duct tape, we headed home.  We stuck some hot pink tape (color chosen by Hannah) on the mirror, and I heated up the glue with a hair dryer.



This mirror was on pretty darn good.  After stringing some wire down the back to try and cut through the glue, Weston just pulled it off with as much even resistance.  And he did a really good job of keeping the drywall damage to a minimum and not breaking the mirror!

And then it was go time on the bathroom update.  First, we primed the walls because it was such a dark color before.  We even had to prime part of the trim because the red was painted on the bottom section of trim.  Then I painted the trim, BM Simply White, the same color as the rest of the house's trim we've painted.  You can see the difference in trim color from where I painted and didn't on the picture below.

We patched some holes and the glue spots from the mirror and got to painting next.  We chose a Sherwin Williams paint.  It called "Sea Salt", and it's a pretty blue-green with gray undertones.  I love the color.  It feels so much more peaceful and bigger in there.

Next up was taking down the light and painting.  We wanted to wait to do that until we were almost done painting so we could have good light during most of the painting.  We were left with two giant holes from where the light was mounted incorrectly and more painting.  Yay!

 Once the patching and painting were done around the light box, we installed our new light that I love from Shades of Light.

I was considering painting the cabinet and adding different hardware to make it look a little more like a furniture piece and less like a standard cabinet sink.  After we got everything painted and the mirror hung, I was sold that I wanted to update the cabinet.   I went with BM Rockport Gray that I've used in both of my houses in different rooms, and we used the semi-gloss finish.  Our cabinets had a white laminate finish, and we knew we needed to get the laminate off so the paint would adhere and last.  Luckily the laminate was SO easy to peel off, and it came off almost in complete pieces.

Then we ended up with this!  I love how it turned out.  I wish I had before pictures of just the sink.  We added new hardware and added a pull to the middle faux drawer.  This cabinet was in bad shape before.  The doors were sagging and the cabinets were stained from age.

 This is how we ended up in there.  The mirror was only $40 from Kirkland's.  I think they always have a nice selection of affordable mirrors.  Overall, we're pretty pleased with our affordable half bath update.  Sometimes I forget we've done the work, and I get happy walking by and seeing it.

This is just a reminder of what it looked like before.

Can't wait to share more updates from our downstairs!

 

Getting It Together

Time to dust off the ole' computer (quite literally, as I'm doing drywall repair and sanding in our office) and get updated with the family happenings.  I love going back and reading about Hannah's first year because you forget so much, and I don't want to forget everything that's happened since I've last blogged.  So let's play a little catch up.  And I want to blog separately about house updates, because I have some to share soon!

We've missed several holidays on this little blog, so let's start with Halloween.  I'm sure some of you on Facebook and Instagram saw Hannah's costume.  We dressed her up as Albert Einstein.  It was Weston's genius idea, pun intended.  Hannah's hair do is identical to Einstein most days.  I try to get a bow in the front to make it cute, but usually the back is wavy and a little wild.

 

It was a pretty easy costume to put together.  I found an inexpensive toddler boy suit from Walmart, and I ordered the lab coat from Amazon.  I like that she can play with the lab coat in the future and even play doctor like Daddy.  My parents were in Texas for Halloween visiting my brother's family, but we did drive down to see Hannah's cousin Caroline.  Lindsey, my sister-in-law, sewed this costume with her Mom.  She was the cutest puppy ever.

After seeing Caroline, we went by and saw our best friends with their daughter, Avery.  She was an adorable pea in a pod.  Avery's Grandma loaded Hannah up with candy, and then we were off to our house to pass out candy!  It was crazy cold on Halloween, and Weston's parents brought in chili.  We had wanted to take Hannah to a few neighbors houses this year, but we decided to wait until next year after how cold it was.

Fall was especially fun with this girl.  She loved to rake leaves outside and jump in them!  Sweet girl.

We celebrated Thanksgiving early this year with my family at my parent's house.

 

My mom's beautiful table setting.

A couple days before Thanksgiving, our friends from Richmond, VA, were in town and stopped for a visit.  Their son, Roderick, is just a few months older than Hannah.  They were too cute together.  We're so happy for them as they just found out they're adding a girl to the family early summer.

We hosted a Thanksgiving meal on Thanksgiving day at our house with Weston's family.

Some days we wait for Daddy to get home from work right before bedtime.  She'll wait and look for his truck to pull up from her window.

Our church had a breakfast with Santa for the children of the parish.  Neither Caroline or Hannah were fond of the man in red up close this year which we were all expecting, but the girls had a blast with the crafts and being together with Grandma.

 

Weston and I dressed up before his company Christmas party, and Weston's parents babysat for us.

For my birthday, we spent a weekend at the Opryland hotel.  My parents got us tickets Friday night for the Radio City Rockette's.  The show was awesome.  It is the last year they'll be in Nashville, so I am so happy we were able to see them.  Saturday my parents brought Hannah up, and we went to see the ICE exhibit Twas the Night before Christmas.

The whole exhibit is made of ice by these Chinese ice sculptors who have been working for months on this.  The last scene was the nativity in pure, clear ice.  It was so pretty.

After the Ice and lunch, my parents left, and we explored the giant hotel with Hannah which she absolutely loved.

We ordered yummy room service that night, and we ate out on our balcony and watch the people and boats go by.  Hannah loved it.  It was definitely the right choice to do room service with her rather than fighting the crowds down at the hotel restaurants.  Plus we thought it was pretty fun!

And finally we had Christmas!  Weston and I unfortunately got the flu over Christmas.  I was really not feeling well on Christmas day, so I wasn't able to get the pictures I would have liked.  Weston did get me a video camera for my birthday, and we recorded her opening up her gifts from Santa.  I really wanted one so we could look back through the years with it.  These aren't the best pictures from my phone, but this was after Christmas eve Mass.  Hannah wore a beautiful navy, smocked corduroy dress with little pearls.

I asked her to stand next to the tree, and she very literally stood into the tree and leaned into it.

Right before bed in our matching pj's.  I hope to keep this tradition going.

After Santa visited our house!  This was the first year for us to be in our own home on Christmas since we were married 7 years ago.  So it was very special to spend it as our little family.

As you can see, Santa brought Hannah some table and chairs, a play kitchen, a baby crib, and play food!  She was a very good girl this year.

Are you still here?  If so, I'm impressed.  I'm sorry most of these pictures aren't the best quality, but I am so happy to have this documented on here.  I went to update Hannah's baby book a few days ago and realized how much I reference the blog to fill in her book.  I love to have this recorded.  Thank you for letting me share it with you!  Happy 2015!