My Home My Story

We sold the house!

2012-01-19T10:16:00.004-06:00

I can't believe it has been a year since I have wrote on my blog. We have had a lot of changes. Over the summer we sold our home and moved. These are pictures of the "old" place. I have to admit I kind of miss it. Our new home is beautiful but needs a lot of painting. I am completely overwhelmed and don't even know where to start. I still haven't even hung pictures on the wall yet!

Christmas Card 2010

2010-12-12T00:23:00.001-06:00

With Love Chartreuse Christmas Card

For hundreds of Christmas card designs, click here.

View the entire collection of cards.

A little peek at my almost completed bedroom

2010-07-16T09:55:00.006-05:00

"After"

Well, I was able to get one picture before my camera battery died. I love how my new room looks. So different from the "before" picture. The nightstands were spraypainted with Rustoleum's Heirloom white and then slightly glazed and distressed. The paint on the walls is Benjamin Moore's Gossamer Blue. I cheated though and had it color matched at Home Depot in their Behr paint. I still need to sew up some new curtains. I also have a chair that I want to slipcover... but we are off to a good start.

"Before"

The Insanity of picking paint colors!!!

2010-07-13T11:34:00.008-05:00

Do you struggle with choosing paint colors? I have painted my downstairs a total of 3 times and I am stilll not totally satisfied. My latest project has been choosing a color for the Master Bedroom. I wanted a blue with a little bit of gray, but not too muted, but with a little bit of aqua or green to it, but I don't want it to look green, but I don't want it to look like a babies nursery, but I don't want it to look too muted, and I definitely don't want it too bright... do you see where I am going with this?

I always seems to know what I don't want, but I don't know what I DO want! It is so frustrating.

So after several months of gathering paint chips from every store, in every shade possible, and after about 6 cans of sample paint I finally took the plunge. The winner is.... drumroll......

BENJAMIN MOORE : GOSSAMER BLUE

Pictures of the room coming soon!

What was I thinking?..

2010-07-09T22:07:00.007-05:00

Have you ever made a decorating decision and regretted it so much? About two years ago, I got it in my head that I had to have this bedding. It is Ralph Lauren "Cold Springs". I was able to buy all of the pieces separately on Ebay and save myself a ton of money. Even then, I still spent a load (I am embarrassed to even admit how much). I made the curtains myself out of an extra king size duvet that I bought. I made 4 panels out of one duvet. They are about 54" by 86". I was able to save quite a bit. Buying that kind of yardage of heavyweight decorator fabric would have been so much more expensive. I even lined them with blackout liner for those Saturday sleep in days that come along once in a blue moon . Well, to make a long story short. By the time I finally got the drapes done, I decided I really didn't like the room at all. It wasn't my taste. It is pretty, but not soothing or very light and bright and coastal/cottagey. I have taken it all down and it is ready to be listed right back on ebay. It makes me sick to think about what a waste of money it was.

On the bright side... I have painted my room the most beautiful shade of soft blue gray. Pictures are coming soon. Oh,... and please ignore the plastic storage bins peeking out from under the bed, and the unfinished paint job on the other nightstand. I have "project A.D.D.".

Stairs are finished!

2010-03-22T17:32:00.004-05:00

So the stairs are finally finished. I was a little nervous about staining them, but I was nervous for no reason. It was actually very easy. I stained them a rich mahogany color and then followed up with 3 coats of polyurethane. I had to lightly sand in between each coat. I really love how they turned out. Now I need to paint the apron (white part that runs along the bottom) and paint the walls too. I would really love to add some white wainscoting up the wall and tear out the carpet and put in hardwoods. We will just have to wait and see....

Dressing up the Mantel

2010-03-04T15:24:00.007-06:00

I decided to change my mantel around a bit. After all of the Christmas junk came down, I decided the stuff I had up there before the Holidays was too FAll/Autumn looking. Those colors work well in this room, but I wanted to lighten it up a bit. I shopped around my house and started with the Ivory plaque over the fireplace. The tall candlesticks were a pewter color and I spray painted them with Rustoleum's Heirloom White and put some glaze on them to age them a bit. I really need to get better about taking "before" pictures... sorry.

New stairs

2010-02-22T18:23:00.008-06:00

BEFORE

I am SO EXCITED. You know how in your home you always have the one thing that just peeves you to no end? Mine was our stairs. When we moved in the handrail was gross. We tried to repaint it, but it had too many layers of grime and gooey paint. So everytime someone came over, the grimey, gooey painted stairs were right there in your face. It was embarassing, and I always felt like I had to make an excuse for the sorry condition that it was in. I didn't want anyone to think that God forbid, I was okay with how it looked. So I got the bright idea, that I would strip all of the paint and try to start from scratch. About half way into the project I realized that this was NOT a good idea. My sweet husband said to go ahead and call our friend of a friend that does stair remodels and "get'r done". YEEEHAWWW! I was right on it. They look so much better, and I love the newel post that I picked out.

Now it is not quite finished yet, because I still need to finish staining and put a couple coats of poly on it.

One coat of stain... almost done.

I am SO behind the times!

2009-12-17T16:54:00.006-06:00

So I am like the most pathetic blogger ever. I love to look at everyones blogs, but rarely get around to updating my own. Maybe I will make a New Years resolution to really get on top of it. I am posting a few pictures of my Thanksgiving decor. I bought some mismatched ugly pumpkins at Hobby Lobby and painted them a creamy off white. The wheat in the pots are from my favorite store Home Goods. I think it turned out pretty nice.

After 4 years I finally painted the kids rotten bathroom!

2009-08-26T10:30:00.003-05:00

So its been 4 years now in this house. When we first moved in, every square inch of this house needed to be painted. I happily jumped into painting. In fact I love painting so much (yeah right) that I even painted several of the rooms more than once. After all of that painting, I just couldn't bare to even paint another room. Especially the kids bathroom/dark dirty dungeon. I hate that room so much. It has no window and my kids don't keep it very clean. YUCK!

So after 5 sample cans of blue and 4 samples of beige, we ended up with.... drumroll please... beige. Yep, thats right plain ol' beige. It took me several days to choose. Everytime I would walk by I would flip the light on, stick my head in and scrutinize all of the colors. Every color was close but not exactly what I wanted. It took days of this and finally I settled on what looked like a nice neutral beige. So off I go to Home Depot. Crap! It looks pink.

Honey, does this look pink?
Sister, does this look pink?
Kids, does this look pink?

Ugghhh. It is pinkey beige. Gross. So then I was mad. I got out my 40 billion quarts of "sample" paint and started adding anything and everything to my pink beige paint. Finally, I achieved it. The ever elusive holy grail of neutral beige paint.

All Stars Swim Championship 2009

2009-07-18T14:58:00.006-05:00

I am so proud of the kids. Our summer swim league is broken up into several divisions. Each division has their own championship, then the top 8 swimmers compete at All Stars. All three of the kids qualified for All Stars. They all did awesome today, but Kyle definitely stole the show. He took 1st place in all 4 of his events.

6 and under Freestyle Relay
6 and under Freestyle
7 year old Butterfly ( he is only 6, so he swam up)
8 and under Boys Freestyle Relay ( all of them 8 except for him)

The video is of his Freestyle event. Sorry about all of my yelling and shaking of the camera. I was super excited.

I'm still here!

2009-04-07T15:55:00.002-05:00

No I have not fallen off the face of the earth. We put a new antivirus software on our computer and now it won't let me upload pictures from my camera. I am at my wits end trying to figure out how to fix it. Hopefully I can get this fixed soon, so I can show you what we have been up to.

Elton John and Billy Joel 2009!

2009-03-24T19:03:00.003-05:00

Les and I went to see the Elton John & Billy Joel concert on Saturday night. It has been a dream of mine to see Elton in concert for quite some time. It was so awesome. They played for almost 4 hours. When they began to play "Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me", I actually got a little teary eyed.

2009 is shaping up to be the year of dreams coming true for me. First the fence and now Elton... So dreamy.

Fence Update

2009-03-24T17:57:00.002-05:00

Why is it that home improvement projects are never simple? After much debate , a couple of trips to Home Depot and one return of stain for another color, we decided to start staining the fence. My first thought was "oh know, what have I done to my beloved fence?". It looked like we painted it red. Les was spraying it and I followed behind with a roller to blend. That wasn't working , so we switched jobs. I proceeded to spray over the fence and nail the sides of our neighbors house. Total panic. We had to jump the fence because the neighbor's gate was locked. We scrubbed and scrubbed to no avail. I even tried using some 100% acetone nail polish remover. Ughhh. Eventually we got most of it off. Back to painting the fence.. I mean staining. The further we went the more I hated it. I was totally freaking out and threatening Les that he would have to tear it all off and fix it. We then decided to try a different approach. We hand rubbed in the stain onto every square inch of that fence. TOTAL NIGHTMARE! ... but I think it looks really nice.

New Fence... Finally a dream come true!

2009-03-19T14:46:00.003-05:00

We have lived in our home for 4 years. For 4 whole years I have been begging my hubby to replace our hideous fence. It is truly the ugliest fence I have ever seen. For those of you that have seen it in person, you know I am telling the truth. Well finally dreams really do come true. It was too cold and wet out to finish the slate on the front porch, so we decided to work on the fence instead. By "we" I mean actually Les. I would go out occasionally to comment give opinion and offer up a nice drink of water. Just doing my wifely duties. I think he did a fantastic job.

BEFORE

AFTER

(Please excuse the pile of doggie doo doo in the foreground)

Barking Mad!

2009-03-16T16:22:00.002-05:00

Have you ever been kept awake all night by a barking dog? Well I have. This weekend was cold in the low 40's at night. For South Texas, that is downright frigid. One of our blessed neighbors left there dog out for two straight nights. The dog barked and howled every 15 minutes. Then it would stop. Just as I was beginning to nod off that dang dog would start up again for another 15 minute session. I just lay there in bed thinking" am I the only one hearing this?". By 5:30 AM of night 2 of this I was seriouslly thinking of marching over there and opening the gate so the dog would run away. It is amazing how deranged our thinking can be when we are tired and sleep deprived. I think the neighbor was out of town and left their normally "inside" dog outside. They also did this over Thanksgiving. Luckily that was only one night, but now I think I need to address the problem.

So, my question is... What is the proper etiquette in addressing a irresponsible barking dog owning neighbor? I would love to hear your thoughts.

Slate tile on the porch

2009-03-12T00:50:00.003-05:00

So for the past couple of years we have intended to do this project. We have had the extra slate tile kicking around the garage for quite some time. We thought we would whip this out in one day and that I would be grouting the entire thing the next. YEAH RIGHT!!! We did finish the bottom step, maybe next weekend we can tackle the top step.

It will take some some more sweet talking on my part. Les loves to work, especially on projects around the house, but he sure HATES to lay tile.

Maddie got a makeover

2009-03-12T00:40:00.002-05:00

Maddie my lovely 12 year old daughter came home from church youth activites all dolled up tonight. Since it is Spring break they thought they would do something more "just for fun". The older girls got to makeover the younger girls. She has started wearing just a little makeup on her own, but I wasn't prepared for the full getup that she came home in. She is growing up so fast.

Ta-da! My latest project

2009-02-26T23:43:00.004-06:00

So I have had this lame unfinished pine cabinet near the entryway for like 3 years now with the intention of painting it. I finally got around to it. I think it turned out great. In fact, I am like over the top super proud of myself.

First I lightly sanded the whole thing. Then 2 coats of primer. I did 2 because I didn't want any of the knot holes to bleed through. Then I painted the whole thing a dark chocolate brown. Then a coat of crackle glaze on just a few areas. I didn't want to do the whole thing, because then it looks too fake. Then a coat of cream paint. Then I "antiqued" it with a brownish glaze. This step took quite awhile. Then I roughed up a few spots. Last, I watered down some of the brown paint, and used a toothbrush to stipple it all over. You can do this by gently running your finger across the brush part so that it kind of "shoots" out the paint. I found some new hardware at home depot in my favorite oil rubbed bronze finish. I still need to put a coat of polyacrylic (clear sealer) on it. The paint has to dry at least a week before I do this step. Hopefully it won't take me another 3 years to get around to finishing it.

Bargain of the week, three lamps for only $19.99!

2009-02-26T23:32:00.002-06:00

More bargains... Hurray! I have been looking for a set of lamps for quite awhile. I am way too cheap to spend a lot on them. I found this set of three at Lowes for only $19.99. It has two matching table lamps and one floor lamp. They were a hideous fake copper color, so I got out my favorite Rustoleum hammered metal paint and sprayed them. I then roughed up the edges just a bit so the copper color shows through. Now I can afford to get some new drum shades for them and modernize them a bit... or maybe I will just leave them as they are.

New chair

2009-02-26T23:28:00.004-06:00

Lookie what I found! Only $70 bucks on Craigslist. It isn't my dream chair, but it certainly will do. Don't you love a good bargain? It also came with a matching ottoman. It is in brand new condition. Maybe sat on a handfull of times.

Kyle lost his 1st tooth

2009-02-26T23:23:00.004-06:00

Kyle lost his 1st tooth this week. I can't believe my baby is growing up. I am so sad.

Rodeo and Taylor Swift concert

2009-02-15T21:38:00.001-06:00

On Tuesday night we took the kids to the Rodeo and to see Taylor Swift. They were so excited to see their first concert. We had a great time rocking out. Notice the concrete wall behind us. Yes, thats right... we were up in the nose bleeds as high as you can get.

2009-02-05T09:43:00.000-06:00

Okay, so I am finally on board. I am blogging. Now what am I supposed to talk about???