Home Tour Part 4--Master bedroom and Summer Bedding

Welcome back to another addition of my home tour. I personally think the rest of the tour isn't all that exciting as what has already been seen. I also think that my bedroom really hasn't gone through a huge dramatic change.

My bedroom started out as a huge storage area while we were remodeling the front of the house. In fact, while we nearly gutted the house (you saw the pictures on previous posts) we (Eduardo, myself, three cats and one dog) lived in two small rooms. This was HARD!

Here you can see that it was a bunch of junk. You can also see the lovely popcorn/cottage cheese ceiling and the horrid carpets.
More junk.
Nice look at the window at the back door in the other room. Please notice that there is no door. There were no doors inside the house to either of the bedrooms and the bathroom door opened out into the hall. (STUPID!) I do wish that I had taken actual before shots.


Then a year or so after we moved in we painted and I set up the room as the main daycare room. While we used what is now Livy's room as our room.

Then we got smart and decided that I wanted the larger room. Plus I wanted to upgrade from a full size bed and get actual furniture that I needed a larger room.

This is how my bedroom normally looks. Yes, that is a freezer in my room. I had to put it somewhere until I was able to put it in the garage. I felt so "unclassy" for a while.

So in this post I was asking about summer bedding and this is what I ended up with. I'm still not sure about it. I love the blue and chocolate and I really wanted a bit of a change from the rich gold and red. What do you think?

This is George. He is about the only thing that I have that matches my new temporary colors for my room.

When it rains

I LOVE it when it rains. Let me state here that we live in a dessert and rain is not very common. We got a heavy, much needed storm that smelled delicious! Don't you love the way how summer rain smells?!

Our backyard. It is hard to see that rain falling in sheets.
A puddle on the patio. I wish Livy was up and I would take her out to jump in the puddles.

Cute hair only last 5 minutes!

I came across a wonderful blog all on doing little girl's hair. I received inspiration from her to do something a little different in Livy's hair. Of course, she had it pulled out in 5 minutes. I look forward to the day when her hair is long and thick and I can try some of the many different styles on her blog. Check out She Does Hair!

Side and back views

The only good front view I could get. Of course she is sucking on the water bottle that I use to do her hair with. Most of the time it keeps her still.

Livy's Room--Part 2--Favorite Things

Here are a few of my favorite things in Livy's room.

Netted Butterflies hanging in several places in her room. She used to stare at these when she was new and later I would ask where the butterflies were at and she would search the room for them.

I love this clock! I found it important to have a clock in the nursery so I knew what time it was. Naturally! I started out with a travel alarm clock until I found this one at Pottery Barn Kids, where else!

I showed this print that I made back in June. I collect used postage stamps from all over the world. I took several butterfly stamps and put them together on a bright pink paper. Framed it and hung by a ribbon to finish the look. I simply love the one of a kind art work that I made for her.

Home Tour--Part 3--Livy's Room

Home tour part 3--Livy's room. If you missed the first two parts, head to the living room, living room favorites, kitchen, and kitchen favorites.

I do not have a "before" picture of this room either. Note to self--take more pictures!

Imagine a dark room covered with paneling except for the last foot of wall which was covered with popcorn ceiling stuff. Also imagine two small closets at one end and the same blue grey carpet as in the kitchen.

The first thing we did was tear down the paneling. The outside of our house is covered with ivy and it was actually growing in the house between the wall and the paneling. Yikes!

Here you can see the frame work to the two small closets. We had every intention to make them larger.

This was a total surprise. When we took down the paneling we found a door! Of course now leading to the wall in my master bedroom. The house was an original one bedroom and was very lucky (I guess) to have two back doors leading to the back porch. One here and the other in the kitchen. The door was completely a part of the wall and we had to literally cut it out with a saw. You can see where the molding used to be and a light switch with the old silk wires.


The next step was my job and oh how I hated it! Trying to scrap off near 100 year old wallpaper!

Between the wallpaper and paneling, there was so much damage to the plaster walls that we had to mud nearly everything. Thanks mom for helping!

Here is Eduardo framing in the closets.

Horrible me, I have no in-between pictures. We tore out the carpet and used the original linoleum floor (green marble looking) for a while until we were ready to install carpets.

And for a time, I used the room as our bedroom followed with a nap room for the daycare kids. Once Livy came along, it is all hers. I still would like to paint (other then what I did a few years ago) and we still need to install closet doors. But that will come!

So here is the current stage of this room. There is so much more that I want to do...you know, decorate!

A look down the "hall" into Livy's room. Bathroom on the left and the utility closet on the right. We will look at these another day.


Where the blue sign is on the wall used to be the door-in-the-wall. I think Eduardo did a great job patching that up.

You can see paint sample on the wall next to the window. I would love to paint stripes on the bottom and a solid light yellow on the top. Still testing it to see if I like it.

I must tell you about the bedding that I purchased for Livy. I was able to get, all Pottery Barn Kids brand, a quilt, toddler duvet, three crib sheets, sham, small pillow w/two small pillowcases, bumper pad, bed skirt, decorative pillow, and window valance. This is about $700 worth of bedding for $75 including shipping. How you might ask?! I found everything in this Pottery Barn kids line "Sophie" on eBay. If anyone out there has a twin size flat sheet that they are getting rid of from this line, I am interested in purchasing it. I will be moving Livy to a toddler bed soon and would like a sheet for her.

This is my favorite window in the house. I love how tall it is and the chunky molding.

This is an older picture of the closet. Last week I took the curtains down to wash and haven't gotten them back up. And I didn't want to show you everything that is behind the curtain. Eduardo will be installing closet doors soon on the monster of a closet!

Stay tuned for my favorites in this room and more home tour!

Wordless Wednesday: Next Generation of bloggers

Starting a little early? Livy--July 22 2008--pulled the step stool up to use the laptop.

For more Wordless Wednesday head to 5 minutes for mom

Kitchen part 2--Favorite Things

"Rain drops on roses and whiskers on kitten....."

Here are a few of my favorite things in my kitchen.

We opted for a ceiling fan in the kitchen to help the air circulate through the house. I know that some people hate ceiling fan and honestly I don't care for them either, except I love this one. It is different then a typical fan, a little fancier you might say.

My metal rooster over the sink. I found a great deal on this bird and simply love how it feels in the empty space above the sink.

I love the fancy oils in bottles. I know that I should really use them (they probably are no good at this point) but I don't want to ruin them.

You are probably thinking....you love your sink?! I love it when it is empty and shiny! Look at that shine and this is in a house with horrible hard water! (Someday I will have a water softener!) I was going to let you in on my secret on how to get your stainless steal sink to look super shiny! It takes 10 seconds after you clean it and very little elbow grease. Perhaps I will save that for tomorrow!

Home Tour--part 2 The Kitchen

The continuation of our home tour. If you missed the first part, head here. The Living room and living room favorites.

Next on our tour is a stop in the kitchen. I spend most of my time here not necessarily because I am cooking but that is where the laptop is at.

This is as close to a "before" shot that I could find. Again, I was terrible at taking pictures the first few hours that we were in the house.

The cabinets were rather short compared to our rather tall ceilings. There was wallpaper in every room (including the ceilings--after we scrapped off the stupid popcorn/cottage cheese stuff!) I hated how the phone jack came right out of the side of the cabinet and the gold veined counter tops simply had to go!



The kitchen had the wallpaper, seen in the first photo on the top of the walls and brown panelling (common in our house) on the bottom. We tore off the wallpaper and the panelling only to reveal a faux tile linoleum on the walls. That took forever to scrape off.



You can see a little bit of the blue/grey carpeting in this photo. There was carpet in every room including the bathroom, yikes!


Once all of the cabinets were down, panelling down, faux tiles chiseled off, carpet out...this is what we had.

A lot of time passed by this point. Eduardo hung our new custom cabinets, tiled the floor, and hung new light fixtures. There was still much to be finished!

Appliances in place.

It took a while for our counter tops to be installed. So we used a piece of wood as a temporary fix. Although considering that there was no running water in the kitchen (no sink!) we couldn't really eat at home.

Our pantry was installed. Where the pantry is now, used to be a free standing gas range/oven. It stuck out about half way into the door way. My only thoughts were, what were they thinking?!

Moldings are starting to go up. The previous owners took out the original near 100 year old molding and opted for nothing. We had to install every piece of molding in the house.

Here is what it looks like now...

The doorway from the living room looking into the kitchen

Check back soon for some of my favorite things in the kitchen and for the rest of my home tour.

Blue Plate and Treasures

I usually don't post much on the weekends because I am busy being a mommy, wife and doing church stuff. Not saying that I don't do these things during the week, because I do, but it may be the same with you that the weekends are simply busy!

I did have to share a few treasures. First is a blue and white plate. You may remember from here that I LOVE blue and white china. I don't know what it is about it, but it lures me in. On Saturday, my mother-in-law gave me this plate. It will be going on a kitchen wall (maybe if a certain plan works out that I will share later) or in another room. I just need to find a plate hanger.

Second, on Saturday, I realized that we have a Hobby Lobby. I have heard people in the blog world walk about it for months and I figured that we didn't have one. I looked Hobby Lobby up and to my surprise we have one 30 minutes from me. I was ecstatic because I found the following for 90% off. I am going to try to think outside the box for these new treasures.
The tall pokey thing (does it have a name?) was $2.50, the large mirror $3.50 and the two smaller mirrors were $1.60, everything was under $10! I love a good deal! I'm not sure what I will do with them yet, perhaps I will paint them, or not.

Lately it seems that I have a one track mind for decorating.

Living room part 2

These are some of my favorite things in my living room.

I LOVE old books. These are old school readers from the late 1800s. Stacking candles on top is a great way to add some depth to a room.

Meet Mr. Shakey aka William Shakespeare. My sister found a bag of clothes on the curb and in it was this bust. She didn't want it and if I remember correctly she thought he was rather ugly. My sweet husband doesn't like him either, but I LOVE him. He sits on the floor next to the TV armoir.

I also LOVE blue and white china. My mother had a tea pot in the same pattern that once belonged to her grandmother. I found this at an antique store.

More old books. On top of the TV armoir is the above blue tea cup as well as a large leather-like hat box (given to me by my in-laws for my stamps). I love the old school readers and Shakespeare plays and it is even better with a mini Eiffel tower on top.

I have shown my vase that was brought back by Eduardo on a recent business trip once before. I enjoy it so much that it must be showcased once more.

In the living room entering into the kitchen I have this above the doorway.

And my favorite tassel hanging on the armoirs knobs. See it here.

Make sure you scroll down to the previous post (comments always welcomes anywhere) for the transformation of this room!