Happy Holidays!

I have been very absent lately but...

If you haven't seen Christmas Vacation then I worry about you, really.  We discovered a few people we worry about after sending this card to our family and friends.  Please tell me everyone has seen it!

P.S. I'll be entering The Paper Mama's holiday card contest so check it out! Thanks!!!

Christmas Decor

Our Family Christmas Photo

Even though its almost February I couldn't forget about our first Christmas not only in our house but married.  What an expensive holiday, decorations are not cheap! Several Joann's coupons later, I finally had the house looking somewhat how I wanted.

We opted for a fake Christmas tree just in case the pup would be too curious with a real one.  This was probably our safest bet for her being under 1 with a love of sticks.  We had to block off the sides of the tree because Reese was running along it looking out the window, knocking ornaments off on her way.

Very proud of her tree

We didn't have many options for hanging our stockings so we hung them from the railing.  

Kitchen Table Centerpiece

Kitchen Chalkboard

My garland was nowhere near as elaborate as I wanted.  I had big shoes to fill because my mom is pretty amazing at decorating her house.  Here is her garland for the entryway from the living room to the dining room.

I had high hopes of copying this but she's a pro at this.

Reese opens her own presents

Speaking of presents, Santa was really good to me this year..he's a good guy.  Batman got me exactly what I wanted, an iPad!  I have been glued to the thing.  My parents also gave us some refinished pieces that fit in perfectly.  One being this bench my mom reupholstered and painted.  I love the fabric we picked out, mostly my mom picked it out because I could not decide which room deserved it the most.  We found the bench at a yard sale over the summer.  The other piece is also amazing but you will have to wait to see that one.

Well, thats a glimpse of the Batcave this past Christmas.
I promise next year I'll get to this before Christmas.

Gallery Wall

The last time I showed you my office was not only months ago (and last year!) but it had a big blank wall.  I finally took care of this problem, it only took me forever.

The blank wall on the right

Playing around with the layout on the floor

It really wasn't as difficult as I make it sound.  I wanted all of the photographs to be in black and white and all frames to be black and varying sizes.  It took me a while to acquire all of the frames I wanted and figure out which pictures to use.  I ended up going with most of our wedding pictures but in my opinion they're the most expensive pictures I will ever pay for so they better be everywhere!  For a while I had all of my frames up with the stock images in them, this was kind of funny for when we had guests over.

Somewhere in my Pinterest travels I saw someone use toothpaste to hang pictures and this is the best method ever.  If I only remembered where I saw this I could give that person the credit but let me tell you how great this is.  So many times I'm stuck measuring and making a hole and find out I was off by just a tiny bit.  This way, you put a dab of toothpaste on the hook for where the nail goes on the back of the frame.  Then, you place it against the wall where you would like it, leaving a dollop of toothpaste where your nail needs to be.  This takes out all of the guesswork.  I will never measure again!  Some frames required two nails and in this case I did the same thing for both hooks and then used a level, this way I knew the distance between the nails.

So here it is..

Have to have my city scenes of Baltimore and Central Park

The office is finally getting there!

Office Makeover Part 1

I had given myself a goal to paint my office in September and believe it or not, I did!  We had the stickiest weather so I didn't want to put my furniture too close to the wall without being certain it was dry.  My office is now worthy of showing you my progress!

So what was I working with? The room wasn't too bad but it wasn't anything to fawn over either.

I know, it looks a mess right! When you don't love the room, you don't really feel the need to clean it up before you put pictures of the mess online.  It became somewhat of a storage room where we put the things we weren't sure about.

We painted it "Smoky Charcoal" by Glidden and I absolutely love it.  I have yet to purchase a tester and see how I like it before going for the gallon so I got lucky again.  Its a very smart idea but once you get me to home depot I really don't want to go home, try it, and come back...I guess I'm just lazy.  So, we got to taping, then got to painting.  Then I sat in the middle of the room and waited for it to dry because I was just so antsy!

I bought 2 Billy shelves from Ikea in black-brown and got to setting them up.  They are much nicer than some of the other furniture I have purchased from them in the past.  They even have a cut out in the back for where the moulding is/would be.

I had piled all of my frames and books in the guest room and now I am trying to sort through the mess.  Here is my office as of now.  It isn't done yet but it looks a heck of a lot better than it did before.

What do you think? I think I followed my inspiration for this space.

This office chair has got to go! So big and bulky!

Reese loves looking out this window with my little bench

I still have a lot that I want to do but I wanted to share my progress so far!

My next project? I'm thinking the basement bathroom, I'll give you a better idea when I nail down my idea.  I'm not sure if I can get it done in October but heres hoping!

Pomander Topiaries

At our wedding, I made tissue paper pomanders for every aisle.  Now that the wedding has come and gone, I'm trying to think of other uses for them.  I could very easily say that they had their hay-day but they were so much work that I'd like to see them have another use.  I'm decorating our bedroom in light blue and grey and coincidentally, my pomanders are light blue.

Wedding Day Photography by Jay Moore Photography

We were very fortunate to have several pieces of furniture passed down to us when we moved into our house.  We have Batmans grandma's bedroom set in our room right not and had our cable box and DVD box on either side.  I found it to be such an eyesore and was trying to think of a way to stack them and have more space on the dresser.  I told Batman we should take out the middle drawer and put them there and he looked at me like I had 3 heads.  So I took that as a no...for now.

I am an active Pinterest fan and found this.  REALLY?! Isn't it crazy when you see exactly what you were thinking/wanted and love it!  I showed Batman and it did just the trick.  What else is great about it? I can make topiaries for either side.  Double Whammy.

I didn't stop there.  I found these gorgeous pots and fell even more in love with the idea.  I got to work looking for fabric.  I didn't want something too busy because the blue is pretty bright.  I found this fabric and thought it would do the trick.

It was pretty easy to modge podge the pots, the hardest part is that Reese wanted to eat the scissors, then sit on the fabric, then jump on my head..it was a never ending battle.  It didn't require much fabric at all and I love how you can make it match any room.

If she could talk, she'd be saying, "Can I help? Can I eat this? Can I stand on it? What are you doing?"

I started with a straight line on the pot and rolled and modge podged as I went until it was completely covered.  I wasn't sure how to finish with the fabric so for one, I made a slight lip and folded it under.  The other I just modge podged until I was out.  This was quick and easy.

When I was all podged out, I put them on top of a jelly jar to dry...it doesn't have to be a jelly jar of course.

I bought my dowel rod, styrofoam ball, and some moss and was ready for completion.  Now, I have some matching bedroom decor and another use for my pomanders!

All I have to do is refinish my dresser.  Thats for another day!

Today is the Day!

Last night, not only did I catch up on my DVRed shows but I cleared out the office so I can paint it today.  I should really thank all of those expensive movie channels I pay for, if it wasn't for them not adding any new movies I would have probably put this project off again. So, thank you!

I haven't even made the trip to Home Depot yet but seeing all of my things in the hallway and this empty room are motivation enough! I haven't fully decided on my color yet, I'm hoping I will fall in love with something when I get there.

So here I am, in my empty office scoping my Pinterest "Office" board for some final inspiration while listening to Third Eye Blind.  I know that once its painted I will want to go on a shopping spree but I'll have to fight the decorating urges.  We bought bookshelves from Ikea months ago and they've been sitting in our room, still in the box, ever since.  To defend myself, they were out of the other 2 shelves I want so I'm still waiting for them to get them in.  It also helped us keep Reese from army crawling under our bed after she got "fixed."

Wish me luck! To be continued...

September Project

It has been busy in the Batcave for the remainder of the summer.  What have we been up to? That is a very good question.  To sum it up, we took a trip to the beach, did some mild spring cleaning, our little Reese got herself "fixed" so she won't have any Reese's Pieces, and Batman is getting ready for a new school year..this time with Kindergartners!

At the Beach with Batman

Reese with her Party Collar

Remember that feeling for the first day of school we had when we were growing up? I miss that feeling..some of them at least.  I also miss the feeling of waking up and seeing that it was a snow day!  I felt bad for Batman and then I got over it!  He was lucky enough to have the whole summer off while I woke up and drove my hour commute to work. I won't lie, at first I thought I would hate it but it was convenient being able to e-mail/text him with "Hey can you pick this up for me?" or "Can you vacuum the living room?"  Then I think about how lucky he is to have a summer off! Yes, teachers work very hard and the poor boy taught first grade without air conditioning in the humid Maryland weather, but months of vacation time must be nice!

The end of his summer was filled with lesson-planning and setting up his classroom.  I was put to work to set up some of his posters for around the room and I took my time making it perfect!

I think my new thing is to work on a project a month and my next project should be the office.  This might motivate me to get a little motivated to finish a room for once. So, my inspiration...

Source

We took a trip to our Ikea last night to get the Billy and Benno shelves and of course, they are out of stock on the Benno shelves.  They said they wouldn't be getting them anytime soon but the store an hour and a half away has them.  So what do I do? Wait it out and hope they get them? Make the trip to the other store and hope that 2 fit in my car? Order them online and pay the whopping $40 for shipping? I'm so torn!

Source - this one I found on Pinterest and I can't seem to access from the link.

When I lived with my parents my room was red and black with a pale yellow wall so I have lots of decor already.  This time I'm thinking about making the whole room monochromatic and having red accents.  My latest dilemma is how dark to go with the grey wall.  My furniture is black-brown so I don't want it to be too dark of a room but some of the darker grey's are just so intense, I love them.  What do you think?