Visitors!

The past few weekends, we've had some wonderful people come stay with us!

First, my parents & brother came to try out our new guest room and celebrate the last weekend of Mom's spring break.

We stayed up late playing games...

(Not sure why my picture didn't load completely? Sorry!)

Went to church @ Watermark!

And, some of my extended family came over for the day!
Those of you who couldn't come, we missed you! 

(Baylor Men's Basketball played later that evening. Can you tell? Ha!)

A few days ago, our cousins, Jamey and Jane Phillip came to stay with us from Chicago! They used to live in Plano, so they came back for the weekend to visit some old friends & hang out.  They are so wonderful. I wish they lived closer! Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures of us altogether! So, Jane..if you're reading this, send me the group pic you have of all of us together & I'll put it on here! :)

Guest Bedroom!

Here is the first room in the house that is complete (for now, at least!)

Our Guest Room!

This is one of my favorite rooms in the house. Wanna know why? The majority of the items you see in this room have a story behind them...

The quilt is one my Grandmommy had at her house

 I love the coral and bright colors.

This little green dresser came from Grandmommy's too...I didn't do anything to it, except for put a coat of Polyurethane over it to protect the finish.  I fell in LOVE with this cute little thing.

Isn't it awesomely green & perfect?

The headboard also came from her house (actually, from her garage).

I gave it a fresh coat of spray paint & DONE!

I love this wall! The frame with the green background & quilt piece came from my Mom and Grandma.  The little green cross was handmade and I purchased it while I was in Honduras serving the deaf population alongside an organization called, Signs of Love. If you would like to see more information, click on the "Crosses" Tab on their webpage!

The quilt was my Mema's (my Great Grandmother) and when she passed away, the girls in the family cut apart and made these shadow box frames with the quilt.

  There is a little poem at the bottom that reads,

"Our grandma's quilt, now patched and torn

 With holes that loving care has worn;

We couldn't bear to throw away

Once seams had pulled, ripped and frayed.

So tenderly we snipped and sewed

A new creation from the old -

It's ready to love now, good as new;

We saved the memories just for you." 

The bedside tables are halfway there...Still working on one. However, to tie in the blue - I found this fabulous table cloth at Target (on sale!), so I added it into the room.  It's another bold pattern, but I like it altogether!

The other bedside table is still in the works. For now, I'm using a little wicker basket...but I am hoping to replace it with the perfect little thrift-store-furniture-find!

Just haven't found the perfect one, yet!

At one of my wedding showers, I received some beautiful handkercheifs from some of the Phillip women - one of them is draped over the wicker basket. Sorta cute? I'm sure it will looks much cuter on my perfect little thrift-store-find bedside table...that I haven't found yet!

Here is a view from the other side of the room. You can see our room across the hall!

Hiiii! :) 

Another great aspect of this room (and, the whole house) is the big walk-in closet that houses allll of my therapy materials and arts & crafts! It's so great to be able to have a place for these things rather than having them hidden/stuffed under the bed or buried in a storage room.

Here are a few BEFORE pics of this room. Before it was called the, "Peter Rabbit Room." The people before us had a super adorable nursery in this room for their baby.  We liked it & we really admired the amazing murals on the walls. Someone very talented put in some hard work into these. We kinda felt bad painting over it all, but we just felt that it was probably best for Peter Rabbit to go instead of staring down our guests while they slept at night. HA!

The nursery - before we moved in:

And, AFTER!

We've had a few visitors lately, which has been SO fun!

More on that coming soon!

Come visit us, please! :)

Husband's Work Bench

I'm not the only one who has been busy on projects over here. It seems like every weekend, you can find us nose deep into our projects. We are loving it, too!

For Christmas, I gave Kyle (actually, he picked it out & purchased it himself) a table saw and a miter saw...since moving into the house, he's been able to set up a little workshop in our garage for his new toys.  However, before he could begin his woodworking, he needed a workbench ( of course! ). So, last weekend he got to work.  All day Friday, Saturday & Sunday he was out in the garage working away. 

Here is a sneak peak of the finished projects & my handsome hubby. :)

In order to get all the wood back from Lowe's, this is what Kyle's Jeep looked like. HA!

First, he built the sawhorses



And the rest of the pics! In the process, he ended up buying a few more tools that he really "had to have" :) I have absolutely no idea what the name of all of these tools are, so I'm not even going to attempt to explain it all! I just stood in awe watching him work away...How does he just know how to do these things?

All done!

 

All set up with the fun tools!

 

Refinished Dresser and Bedside Table

Happy Monday to YOU!

I am making it my goal to update you on many of the projects that we've been working on over here!

In January, while we were visiting my parents in Abilene, we took a trip over to Hamlin (Go Pied Pipers!) to my Grandmother's House. Grandmommy has this HUGE shed in the back that has all kinds of fun things....We found my Great Grandfather's old dental chair from when he was a dentist way back when (Based on the looks of the chair, you couldn't have paid me $ to go to the dentist, then...way too scary looking! HA!) We found tons of antique items: an old typewriter, fan, iron, tools, original Dr. Pepper crates, old tools in my Grandaddy's workshop and the list goes on & on. We also found some great pieces of furniture! I've been wanting to take this old furniture, give it a little TLC and make it new again.  Now that we have the house and I finally have a garage to work in, we brought it all back with us to the Big D and I got to work!

This is the first piece that I re-finished. It wasn't as easy as I was expecting...and, it has it's own little mistakes pieces of character...but I absolutely love the way it turned out!

And, just to give you a picture of where this little baby came from...Here are the before pictures! I actually used this dresser in my room as a little girl.  Years ago, my Grandmommy painted this dresser and bedside table.  Apparently, she was a little DIY'er herself, I think I'm turning into a mini-Marge. :)

 Not sure why it was yellow? I think it used to be an off-white color.  After years upon years of sitting in a garage, it turned yellow. Nice. HA! So, after deep cleaning every square inch. I was finally able to get going on the transformation. 

Now, I knew that it had been painted before, but I wasn't sure what type of paint was used on it before (latex? oil base? water base?), so I began sanding away.  After I sanded it, I primed it. Then, I painted it... I chose to use a spray paint because of the many detailed parts of the dresser, I didn't want drips or brush marks.

I used Rust-oleum Painter's Touch, Satin "Heirloom White."

I also used Rust-oleum's Primer.

BUUUT, if you had asked my poor little fingers-I'm pretty certain they wouldn't have agreed to using spray paint. They practically fell off after pushing down on the spray can for that long!

After I finished spray painting, I wanted to give it a nice glossy finish.  I bought Rust-oleum's Clear Gloss finish to give it a nice last coat.  However, as I began spraying, small patches of the paint began bubbling up. NOOO!!! I immediately stopped spraying. Clearly, I had done something wrong.

A few things I learned through this project:

1. I am no furniture painting expert!

2. When something goes wrong, don't freak out -

Instead, try to stay calm so you can think of a solution!

3. It's okay to spot treat the mistake & it's okay if it's not perfect...it just adds character. :)

So, to fix my mistake, I spot treated the areas that began to bubble up. I sanded them down again, re-primed & re-painted those areas.  Then, I purchased some Minwax Fast-Drying Polyurethane (clear gloss) to give it a nice glossy finish and protect it from water spots.

This stuff worked wonders & I have used it on many other pieces of furniture since. I learned through this project that some people don't like to seal painted furniture. However, I have to disagree with that theory. I like using Polyurethane to seal and protect the paint jobs I've completed because it makes it look shiny and pretty.  There are many different types (depending if you are covering oil-base or water-base paint) and you can also use it to finish a stained piece of furniture or many other things as well.

Here's my nice shiny dresser top!

I loved the hardware the dresser already had. I really wanted to use them, but they wern't in the best condition.  If you're enjoy DIY projets, you've probably heard of the blog, Young House Love.  I used their tutorial on painting hardware. You can find it here.  

They recommended using Rust-oleum's Metallic Primer & Paint-in-One

I think it turned out great!  

Can't forget about the end table.

Love this cute little thing!

Now, I'm loving the fact that I get to use the same dresser set again that I used when I was a little girl. And, it was my grandmothers, originally.

I LOVE furniture that has a story behind it!

I would love to hear your thoughts on the project! Hope I can inspire you to re-finish some of your own furniture & make it new again.  :)

Sweet Surprise!

Our Year & a half anniversary was this week!

I love having an excuse to celebrate something, so I was hoping to make a big deal out of our anniversary weekend. So, to celebrate, we had planned to have a little getaway & go camping somewhere. I guess we have been spoiled with great AWESOME weather lately, and we were kind of expecting another weekend of sunshine with 75 degree days. Welllll,  reality kicked in on Thursday and the temperatures dropped from the 70's and 80's to the 40's and 50's. What? It's not supposed to be in the 70's in March? Okay then March, if you're not going to be warm and pretty, will you at least bring us some snow? Oh, and let it stick to the ground this time, please!

Anyway...you get the point. The weather took a turn for the worse, so we canceled our camping trip/getaway weekend.  So, instead, we decided to stay home & pull out the projects around here to try to get stuff done around the house.

Thursday evening, I arrived home. Kyle had already gotten home for the day.  He told me he had a surprise for me! Woa...I love surprises. Him, not so much...But, I love them!

He went out to the garage to his Jeep & brought in a box that looked like this:

Hmmm...

I opened the box & found beautiful light blue Hydrangas! They are lovely! I was so pumped...I love putting out fresh flowers around our little house. And, he has been listening to me say that I would like to do that sometime soon! :) What a guyyyyy.

Here they are around our house!

Love 'em!