More Sneak Peeks! In Progress!

Things are SLOW going here.  My husband has been working insanely long hours in the intense heat and its wearing him out.  I'm dealing with physical and emotional issues that have me just drained.  Add to that financial strain, and its really hard to get things done!

SCROLL DOWN FOR NEW HOUSE PICS!

My oldest daughter and her fiance moved out, so we were able to finish unpacking some more, and start using our front room for games and art projects like it was intended!  That was very nice, to get all of that unpacked and set up!

 Paris has gotten back into making artwork as well.  She loves blending several different techniques and mediums:)

 

 The girls and I had fun at the park for a girl's night out...

But at HOME....

Patrick found a bunch of free pallets on Craigslist, then he and the boys took them apart for free lumber!

Which came in handy for lots of building!

We got started on Paris' bunk using free pallets! The cabinet is under her bed for her clothes, then the top part will be built in with doors that she can leave open or closed!

The AVENGERS Bathroom!!!

We got started on the Avengers bathroom... and that is looking AWE-MAZING!

The gray part that you see is actually our bathroom wall leaning up against the living room wall so that Paris can trace the characters on it... the finished product is turning out SO INCREDIBLY COOL!!!

Here's a HINT:

In the Near Future:

We have an "Avon Kick Off Party" scheduled for next weekend (the 8th) to help Paris get her Avon business going... and the week after that, on September 15th, we're having a Big Birthday Bash for Bean the Monkey Puppet Show.  If you're local to us and would like an invite for the Avon party OR if you have a little child who enjoys monkeys or puppets, let me know by facebook message on our fan page, and I'll send you an invite!

Oh, speaking of my AMAZING daughter, who is doing such AWESOME things with our Avenger's Bathroom... here is  http://www.youtube.com/user/msfashionablychic/videos :

Welcome to Our New Home: The Living Room

Welcome to Our New Home:  The Living Room

Ta Da!!!

The living room is my favorite room in this house (at least until my kitchen is done:)

It is so OPEN and there is a sky light.  

We bought a new sectional sofa at a furniture store 'Going Out of Business' sale.  It was $483.00 with tax (that's exactly how much cash my husband had in his pocket, and what he finally offered them after they tried to sell it to him for $900.00)

I painted the north and west wall teal, as well as the hallway ceiling (omg, popcorn ceilings are SUCH a HUGE pain to paint!!  I will never ever ever do that again.)

I LOVE the interesting angles in this room!

Somebody else is going to have to paint that top part, because I hate being up that high!  I got ALMOST to the edge.  That is our messy kitchen there in the background.

Then it dried REALLY dark. 

 The room is just not very well lit.  When I painted my table top this SAME COLOR, it looks like this in the sun:

I literally went back in the house with the can of paint and held it up to the wall to make sure that I had actually used the right can of paint!

Still, I didn't like the solid dark wall, so I added some lighter paint on the bottom, and slowly worked it up to the darker color on the top.  I like this MUCH better!

I'll be hanging our huge mirror on this wall, so it reflects some of the green from the front room.

I really need to work on some artwork for this wall.  Patrick is going to build me some custom designed shelves for this big white wall, which will stay white EXCEPT for a cool mural of some sort that we will turn into a giant wall clock and, of course, the shelves.  

I'm excited for that!  He'll also be building in his speakers/sound system stuff that he collected when he was doing custom home theaters full time.  There will be a pull down screen for our projector built in at the top of the shelves.

This is the view from the kitchen.

My obnoxious children kept jumping into every shot I took today.  It became a game:)

OH!  And the hallway ceiling goes from the living room to the end of the hall where it meets up with our colorful doors!  I LOVE IT SO MUCH!  *We still have four more doors to paint yet*

If you can't tell, I LOVE lots of bright colors:)  What is your decorating style???  Am I the only colorful person out there???  And WHERE can I go to find a very specific shade of pink?  I'm not finding the color I want ANYWHERE!!

Welcome to Our Home: The Office, Art Room, Den, Ummm... Bedroom???

Welcome to my new home!

This is the first room when you enter the house.  You probably actually notice the living room first, as there is a big "window" in between the rooms, but this is technically the first room.  It is meant to be a dining room, but its kind of our office/all purpose room.

The color did not show at ALL in this photo, but this is the "window" to the living room.  Patrick wants to put a saltwater fish tank here at some point.

I wanted it a bright lime green... but when the paint dried, it was more of an apple green.  Poo.  I am REALLY not thrilled by the color, but I have too much to do to fix it now.  Maybe later, or more likely it will grow on me for a year:) 

 The Teal shade in the door frame is the color of the living room wall and hall ceiling. 

Setting up our office:

The computer desk that we got at a garage sale for $10.00!

The Arts & Game table w/4 chairs that we found at a yard sale for $6.00!

The shelving was from Lowes.  We bought them last year for our other house to use in the kitchen... they were on sale at the time for I think $60.00.  We bought all of the baskets at that time, too, I can't remember how much, but it felt like a LOT to me because I'm fairly cheap:)

Patrick bought me this cool grass plant (no, not that type of grass... some kind of curly grass. I love it:)  That sits on some little drawers we got at a second hand furniture store for a few bucks.  I will paint them and hang them in the entry way at some point... maybe.

Speaking of THAT type of grass, our front yard has a Chinese Maple tree in it, and the second time we came to look at the house, my daughter Paris came in with a leaf and said, "MOM!  Look at what's growing in our front yard!"  I almost freaked out at first glance.  I mean, come on, I've never actually SEEN pot leaves in real life, so what do I know, but:

ANYway, back to the house... oh, wait, JUST as we were moving, my oldest daughter calls from out of state to tell me that her boyfriend lost his job, and since they were planning on moving down here at the end of the year anyway... can they come and stay for a few weeks or so while they look for a job and apartment for him?  

Um... well, Sure.  Why not?  We bought an inexpensive futon at WalMart for Matt to camp out on.  We set it up opposite the art desk.  We're still trying to find places to put things, but its going fine.  For us, anyway.  This poor guy has lived alone for years, and grew up with only one brother.  Suddenly he's thrust into this house full of 7 crazy family members that he just met.  I guess this is a good test for him to see if he really wants to marry into all of this!  Now our shelves are a little bit MORE full...

My 11 year old daughter made this painting for the front room.  I LOVE it!!

SNEAK PEEK:  Tomorrow, The Living Room!!!

What is your favorite room in the house and why?

Works in Progress: Kitchen Table, Glitter Floor, Colorful Walls and More!

Elephant was NOT happy to be woken up.

Someone thought it was a good idea to paint the sidewalk leading to our house with this horribly tacky "Faux Stone" look... big on the faux.  Ugh.  I will have to repaint this with something soon because it is such an eyesore to me.  Plus, I REALLY don't want people thinking I did it on purpose myself!

So, I don't really have any FINISHED projects to show you yet.  I did an ombre style wall in the living room that I love, but its too dar now to take photos.  I need to get some hardcore lighting for this house.

The fixtures that are already here are horrendous.  I mean, seriously... who DOES this?

And there is a dual one in the entry way and there was a single one in the hallway (that one has already gone bye bye!)

And the one in our bedroom is even worse.  I know its hard to see, but that shiny fake gold, the horribly tacky fluted glass shades... *shudder*  We will be removing the whole thing because we're actually going to build our bed in... kind of an enclosed 'bunk' for us.  When we lived in the bus, we LOVED our little enclosed bedroom.  I can't wait until that's done!

Our poor kitchen table was SO destroyed with paint spills, burned spots, warped and water stained spots, it needed a new finish.  I'm painting the top to match the living room walls, then I'm going to tape off a design and paint it all black and finish it with a glossy clear coat.

We're redoing Paris' floor.  This is the third try... and I think this one is going to work!  I'll have a blog post up once its finished with all of the process, including what didn't work, and what did!

Wow. Good customer service. Last week Patrick went to Lowes and asked for advice on flooring for Paris' room. (He needed to put down another layer of cement so that we can smooth her floor for glitter). An employee recommended something that turned out to be the wrong thing. Even though he had already opened 2 of the 3 bags, they took them back and refunded his money because he got the wrong advice at their store. Awesome. Thank you, Lowe's Home Improvement for correcting a mistake!

Paris is decoupaging The Avengers comic book pages to the cabinet doors in the kids bathroom.  This bathroom is going to be EPIC!!!

I went shopping with my 17 year old son today.  He was taking me out for my birthday, but when he saw these hot pink things for his room... he was in love.  He shares a room with his brother who doesn't care about color at all, so their room is going to be Kainan's favorite color:  Hot Pink (and silver and black)

Here is my little boy painting the first pink wall:

Vintage Stove Find and MORE Projects Coming Soon!

Yesterday Patrick and I hit the Habitat for Humanity Restore to buy some tiles for cheap for my ink staining project.  I had ordered my pink and purple alcohol ink staining supplies online and wanted the tiles to be here, ready to go when my shipment came in.

We were there, moseying around when my husband came upon this gem:

Ahhh!!!  It is a vintage stove!!!

It is a Tappan Deluxe, although we haven't found exactly what year it was made, its from somewhere around the 1950's.  How cool is that???

Oh, and the BEST part?  It was only $75.00!!!

There was another one (also for $75.00) that had a double oven, but it needed a lot more work, so we left it behind. 

This morning my husband texts me and says, "Wait, see if they still have that other oven, too."

I knew he'd do that... he was regretting not getting that one ever since we left the store.  I think we're going to end up with two vintage stoves in our house.  One will be a work in progress in the garage, but still... $75.00 and if we can't get it up and working, we can sell it for parts for more than $75.00, so its still a good investment.

This stove, with double ovens would be a much more realistic fit for our family of 6:

We also bought supplies so that I could stretch some canvas and make some paintings for the new house.  If I get my packing done, I will start with that tonight.  I am SO excited!!!

Inspiration for the boys room:

I want to do a painting similar to this in colors that coordinate with the room... one for The Avengers and Possibly The Hunger Games that both of my sons love.

Source: etsy.com via Byn on Pinterest

The Color Scheme for their room, Silver, Aqua/Teal, white & some black.

Source: bhg.com via Byn on Pinterest

I definitely want to make a word using these letters!!!  Not sure what they'll want.  Probably "Awesome":)

Source: vippins.com via Byn on Pinterest

I would also like to find some corrugated roofing for one or part of the walls.  Anyone have any clue where to get that without spending a huge fortune?

And some fun quotes from their favorite shows, The Office, How I Met Your Mother, Friends and  favorite movie quotes.


I found it fairly difficult to figure out the decorating for the boys' room.  Thankfully, Paris was a big help because the boys weren't sure what they wanted!  I think it is going to turn out looking just amazing.

Source: roomzaar.com via Byn on Pinterest

Source: vitamin-ha.com via Byn on Pinterest

Ink Stained Tiles for our Kitchen Backsplash!

I found this AMAZING blog post through the magic of Pinterest, and I am SO SO glad that I did!  It was SO much fun and I couldn't be happier with the end product!

When I saw these on Pinterest, I fell totally, instantly in love.  I knew I had to have these for my kitchen!  I'm hoping that it works out to use them in there, that the colors will match up nicely with the living room colors, but if not, they will go in my bathroom.  I just LOVE how they turned out!

We bought the inks at Hobby Lobby and the tiles at Lowes for practicing.  There is a Habitat for Humanity used  housing store here in town that I just found out about after living here for over a decade... and they sell boxes of tiles for SUPER cheap, so we will get the bulk of our tiles from there for less than ten cents a piece.

You need inks, a toothbrush and Alcohol blending solution that you can purchase at your local hobby/craft store, or online here.

First coat the tile with the alcohol blending solution.  You don't want puddles, but you have to give it a good coat and work fast because the stuff evaporates quickly!

Then, you just put drops of color and watch it explode into amazingly cool patterns.


We experimented a little with using other things like q-tips and whatnot, but really we just liked the basic patterns it created all by themselves.

The best part of this is that you can't "fail" at it!  If you end up with a pattern you don't like, just use the alcohol blending solution to wipe it off and start over again!

You can also put small drops of the blending solution on the colors and it will leave "white" spots.  You can wait til that dries and just keep adding layers.  There are some awesome effects!

 My husband made on that looks almost tie dyed, its pretty awesome, too!

I finally found the best way to clear coat them to protect them from scratching on the blog with Aimee's Comment.  It sounds like it will be a bit time consuming, but I'm thinking that on a hot summer day in the garage, it will go fast enough. (With some good ventilation, of course!)

So, what do you think?  Looks fun, eh?  I LOVE them and can't wait until I get to use them!


ETA:  I actually changed my mind about these colors.  I am going to use these in my bathroom or something.  I used more berry colors for my kitchen: