My Adorable Little Tea Cart

Have I mentioned my love of Craig?? One afternoon, while spending some quality time with Craig, we stumbled across this adorable little tea cart.
Well, actually that is an adorable little sweetheart but behind him, if you look closely, is my adorable little tea cart. It was brushed brass soooooooo I took out my handy dandy can o' black spray paint and got to work.

At first I thought it looked too masculine but it's growing on me and I'm diggin' my adorable little tea cart. By the way. This little cart only set me back a mere ten bucks! Oh how I love Craig!

My love affair with Craig.

That is right. I have been having a love affair for some time now with Craig. Craig is so organized and orderly. I enjoy curling up, just me and Craig, hot tea in hand, searching from one list to another. It is so thrilling when Craig helps me find something I need and I bring it home with me. Like this mirror that was white washed. I spray painted it black and hung in our breakfast area. And my swiney butcher with the chalkboard I spray painted red. These I don't know what I'll do with but Craig and I found them yesterday and they were F-R-E-E!
I have to admit I've cheated on Craig with Will. I just love Will and all his Goodness! Just today I snuck over to Will's place and found all of these for less than a Jackson, including tax! That's a Martha Stewart pitcher ($2.99), some glass candle sticks ($2.99 each), a cute litte basket with a wooden handle and the cup and saucer is a pattern that I've been collecting that my Grandmother has called Antique Grape by Metlox. They were .49 cents each!!

I have been very busy on some before and after projects I picked up while hanging out with Craig and Will, a love affair I don't see ending any time soon...

Boys' Bathroom Makeover

Miles and I officially did our very first do-it-yourself makeover. It wasn't a major overhaul like you would see on TV but it was a start for us and we are pretty pleased with the results.

We bought our house last summer. It's a perfect floorplan for our family, but was in desperate need of a facelift. It was built in 1980 and had one prior owner, a bachelor, and we figure most of the decor was here from day one. There was wall paper throughout and he did have the place painted. However, every room in the house had a mud colored "accent" wall and all of the trim was either stained dark brown or painted beige.

The first month we were here we spent an insane amount of money on a terrible interior paint job. (Enough story there for another post) Miles and I look at it as a super expensive "primer" as we are now taking each room one at a time and totally repainting them ourselves. The painters did remove all of the wallpaper, which was a job I did not want to do, and retexture the walls where the paper was removed and "primed" it for us to work our magic.

Project #1 is the boys' bathroom. As I mentioned in a prior post, there was carpet in the vanity area and two layers of peel and stick flooring in the bath area that had begun to peel up. So, we decided that would be the best place to start.

Miles pulled up all of the flooring and layed tile in both rooms.



He then replaced the toilet with a water efficient one. He put new baseboards down and stripped and repainted the doors and all of the trim. As well as, replaced all of the door hardware with brushed nickel knobs and hinges. He did an outstanding job on all of it.

I painted the walls. We chose Atmosphere Blue by Restoration Hardware. I hung a black window treatment and a long skinny black framed mirror that I found on sale at Target. I also hung 3 robe hooks, instead of towel racks, new tp holder, hand towel holder and all new door pulls on the cabinetry. I'm not a contemporary decorator and this was a stretch for me to use all of this nickel. But I like it!

I also installed a frame around the mirror. Ironically enough while I was doing this, Rhoda at Southern Hospitality was doing the very same thing on her blog. Go see how hers turned out. They look great! Hopefully she will have a Mr. Linky in a few weeks as she inspired several others to do the same and we can all talk about our experiences.


We are going to replace the countertop, sink and faucet and then it will be complete. I think it will grow with 3 little boys in it's current state and now we can focus on our next project.

One Last Christmas Gift

"What would you guys like for Christmas?" Gramma (aka Miles' Mom) asks. We just bought this house and we knew it would be something for that. So, we decided that our livingroom furniture should be reupholstered, as it did not match and was just pooped out.




So this is what we picked out.



And we waited for Mingo to work his magic. With only one chair in the livingroom.

And here is our "new" furniture.



Now we need to decide on window treatments and get some more art work on the walls and I believe this room will be complete.
Thanks Gramma!

Bathroom redo; phase one

So, we've been in our house 6 months, we have survived the Holidays and now we are on track with projects galore. Here is a peek at the bathroom redo we've started working on.

This one is upstairs and shared by all 3 boys. They take hour-long swim baths with goggles, swim toys, etc. Water has been splashed onto the floor that was that stick on tile, which started curling up at the edges. When Miles went to pull it up he found it had a ton of "glue" poured underneath it, on top of yet another layer of
(you guessed it) sticky tile. The original sticky tile was pulling up, so whomever did this tile job just took a staple gun and stapled down the edges, poured some type of glue over it and stuck on more vinyl tiles. (what??) That is gone as well as the carpet, that was in the room with the vanity.



The nasty toilet is gone. Stains were "free with purchase"!

I was just horrified when my dear husband so proudly told me that the toilet fit through the bathroom window! WELCOME TO THE CITY! The neighbors surely were thrilled to see a toilet fly out of the 2nd floor bathroom window in our nice new suburban neighborhood. OY!

It took us a while to decide on the paint color.



The decision was finally made and I've painted the walls and will start sanding down and repainting the doors while Miles works on installing the tile.


We still need to pick out the baseboard and get that painted and I was told today that I have to choose a grout color. SHEESH I don't know....

Anyway, I've also created myself an area designated for my computer. It was in my bedroom and I found that I was sitting in bed reading everyones blogs until rediculous hours of the night/morning. So, no more computer in the bedroom. I have my own little niche and I'll be blogging more regularly. I've also sent off the couch, chair and ottoman to be reupholstered. I'm looking forward to getting those back. I've washed all of my new crystal and found it all a spot on the china cabinet. Ashley and I put Trey's bunk beds together today. I've cleared out Christmas, it's in the garage waiting to be put in the attic. (I don't do high places) And, I've purged several boxes from our garage so that we can actually see floor space now.. Hooray, I may get my car in there afterall. I'll post on more of our pojects between working on them.

The boys are all in bed (Trey with his Shamu, Okapi, Deery Deer and Goodnight Dinosaur.)


and Ashley is going out with friends so I'm going to go watch a movie with the hubster. See you later.

The three year old, clippers and a broken oven!

Wow! Has it already been two weeks?? My how time flies when you are having, um, fun. Yes, we have been very busy here. I have not been able to do any baking as my oven is broken. It is most annoying. We inherited the oven when we bought the house this summer. I called prior to Halloween to get it repaired and here we are two months later and I still have an oven with Linda Blaire living inside it. I have been promised that I will be up and running again Tuesday.
Holding my breath? Don't count on it!!

All the while I was dealing with the nitwits at the appliance repair shop. {By the way, call me if you want to know who not to use to fix your oven.} My 3 year old decided he needed another hair cut. This is what he looked like prior to Monday. He is the little one in the front with his two brothers and cousins behind him. I just love this picture. Thanks Melissa!!

And this is his new look today:

Notice the scowl on Santa's face in the background. Oh yes, he is indeed watching! Kleenex stock soared yesterday I am sure of it. And, Kleenex, you are welcome.
Between the never ending crisis, I have been able to roast and puree my Autumn pumpkins. I'll get on that post and hopefully next week I can bake a way. I see pumpkin bread in the near future!
On an extremely positive note. Ashley finished up her finals, at Incarnate Word, yesterday and reported two A's and two B's. Way to go Ash!!! (I do however, expect you back on the Dean's List asap!)
I finally figured out how to add a background to my blog. Cudos to http://www.thecutestblogontheblock.com/ for having beautiful backgrounds and excellent instructions.
Have an extraordinary day!
Jennifer