Blog Vacation

Obviously I've taken a pretty long and leisurely vacation from the blog. I could make a thousand excuses but I'll just chalk it up to being a toddler mom. Oh, and settling into Nashville.

Between July and now I've painted the kitchen a lovely red! It's called "Red Delicious" by Glidden! It turned out pretty well. (I'm definitely not a professional painter!) I also put up some pictures above the cabinets to draw the eye upwards and use some of that blank space. I got the idea off of a blog I found via Pinterest. Here's their link. I found some frames at various thrift stores and spray painted them black and then filled the frames with black and white pictures of places around the world that our family has been!

This is what the color of the kitchen was before.

This is when I painted the kitchen red.

These are the pictures I put above the cabinets. The pictures include Notre Dame, Cotopaxi, Macchu Picchu, Daniel's family's house, My family's house, the Great Wall of China, Wrigley Field (of course!), the Basilica in Quito, and the post office in Madrid.

I was having some issues with the light fixtures in our kitchen and dining room--issues as in I didn't care for their configurations. So…one time when Daniel's Grandaddy was in town (yes, I asked Daniel's 85 year old grandfather--who happens to be one of the best handymen around to do hardware tasks around my house) I asked him to switch up the light fixtures for me. I spray painted the chandelier in the kitchen black and added the cutest little chandelier shades (you can see the update in the photos above)! Then we moved the ceiling fan from the dining room into the kitchen…I'm a firm believer that kitchens in the South need a ceiling fan! And then we left the dining room bare until I found an old chandelier at a local thrift store and upcycled it! I spray painted it a brushed nickel and found lots of glass shades that were all the same! Daddy put it up for me when he was in town.

This is what the chandelier looked like when I found it.

This is what the chandelier looks like now! (Except that it's in the dining room and not on my kitchen counter!)

So, I've taken a break from the blog, but not from doing some projects around the house! I think we're going to paint the dining room navy above the chair rail and a creamy white below the chair rail. Daniel read that it's better for resale value if it's a neutral color, but we do plan to live here for awhile--I could always repaint when the time comes to move--or maybe in the next decade another color lover like me will come along to buy our house!

Coming up soon I'll do some more blogs about what we've done since July! Look for some blogs about our trip to Washington D.C., NYC, the Pumpkin Patch, Ecuador, and Emma's Outdoor Tea Party that was a photo shoot for our Christmas cards! Thanks for reading!

{MSP}

Emma's Nursery

Emma's room is the first room in the house that we tackled. This was mostly practical. We knew we wanted to paint, and we knew Emma needed to be away from the fumes, and we knew we were leaving town for a few days to wrap up things in Louisville. So we chose to embrace our first home improvement project ever.

When we first looked at our house there was one gigantic thing that stuck out that we didn't love...beadboard. There were two rooms in the house that had beadboard. Emma's room, and the room that is now Daniel's office. We planned to leave the beadboard in Emma's room because it was a normal height and looked pretty much ok. (The beadboard in Daniel's office was about 6 feet high and turquoise. Yikes!) The beadboard in the nursery was a little off--the beadboard was hot pink and the top of the wall was plain white. So we planned to do a little switcharoo and paint the top half a light pink color and the beadboard a cream color.

Once we got started (read once Daniel got started), we decided that the beadboard (which hadn't been very well installed) was a little bit too splintery at the bottom and that sweet Emma might cut up her tiny hands. So off came the beadboard! Which took a really long time. But my Mom, Dad, and Jennifer came over to help with the project. The result was that in a day the old beadboard was off and the walls were spackled, sanded and painted. Whew! Lots of work. I had the best job--entertaining our tiniest girl. :) I definitely got the best deal!

So...that was a really short synopsis of all of the effort that everyone put into making Emma's nursery the most darling, peaceful room in the house!

And now, what everyone has been waiting for...the before and after picture!

The top photo is from the previous owner's photos when they listed the house. The bottom photo is Emma's current room.

Emma's nursery is such a peaceful room. The light pink turned out perfectly (The color is called "Possibly Pink" by Behr.) It's the perfect little haven for our darling girl. Sometime I'll have to do a post about the different pieces of artwork in her room and how they are all so special. Until then, I think it's time for a tea party with my sweet Emma in her darling nursery!

{MSP}

A Big Blessing

For the longest time I really thought that Emma was not going to crawl. And you know how new mothers are. Constantly comparing ourselves to other mothers who have babies of similar ages. It seemed like everyone I knew--their baby could crawl. Emma could scoot around--but she couldn't crawl. Finally I asked the Lord, if she wasn't going to crawl as soon as I'd like, could He please delay it a bit longer so that we wouldn't have to "babyproof" two homes. And wouldn't you know how wonderful the Lord is...we were not in our new home for 5 minutes when we set Emma down in her new nursery...and she started crawling. The Lord hears even the smallest of His children's prayers. This little mother is immeasurably grateful for the Lord's rich blessings!

{MSP}

P.S. Now Emma crawls everywhere and pulls up on everything. She still isn't walking yet--which is probably another one of these kinds of blessings because I still haven't gotten those baby gates up! Baby steps...literally!