A Little Bathroom Makeover

A couple of years ago, while we were living in Portland, my cousin came for a visit. She is amazing! Very creative and enjoys alot of the same kinds of projects I do. One of our projects while she was visiting was to give my guest bath a little facelift. Sadly, I was in such a hurry, that I didn't take any before pictures. :( However, the cabinets were a light colored laminate particle board. I was so NOT in love with them. All we did was tape the area off and buy several cans of this handy-dandy product at Home Depot.

Afterwards, we had BLACK cabinets! My favorite. :D 

Granted, the bathroom was still a work in progress. My next goal was to paint the walls a lovely shade of anything but white, add a nice light fixture and paint my mirrior frame (a Craigslist find for $25) black. However, around this time we found out we'd be putting our place up for rent and moving to San Diego for my husband's job. DARN IT! I'd just gotten started!  So....my guest bathroom is still not finished. I look forward to getting back to all those projects at some point if we ever end up back in Portland. I LOVE the way my cabinets turned out though!! It was exactly like the picture I had in my head. Don't you just love it when that happens? 

Well, since it worked so well the first time......

When we finally bought a home in San Diego, I decided to do the same thing in our master bathroom. Can I just say that the "Before" picture was NOT taken while we lived there!!! We had hold-over tenants in the home for awhile and were not able to move in right away. So this picture was taken BEFORE we moved in. That is NOT all our stuff everywhere. LOL! :D I was just glad that the tenant was okay with me taking pictures, as I had alot of planning to do. :) 

Below is the "Before" of the Master Bathroom

Just a little over a month later, Dan I finally were able to move in to our new home. We had the nasty blue carpet taken out and replaced with gorgeous tile, the walls painted and, I'll admit it, I cheated this time and had the painters do my cabinet painting for me. I was busy, people. I was unpacking our whole lives while my husband was still up in Mammoth Lakes!!! I went to Home Depot and picked up my trusty ole Rust-Oleum Spray Paint and told the painters what I wanted. They were skeptical and said they didn't think it would work. I assured them that indeed it would. The head guy said he didn't want to be held responsible for a botched job and I told him I'd done it before and felt very confident it would work out fine. I'd take full responsibility. A day later, Voila! :D My beautiful bathroom cabinets!

This picture was taken right after our floors were put in. I threw a few canisters up to make it look "lived in." But have done my decorating since. Don't you just love them. My black cabinets totally make my heart smile. :D

About a month ago, our awesome painter Hector called to ask what kind of paint I'd bought. He wants to start using it too. LOL! :D 

An Early Morning and a Book Wreath

They say that the second trimester is supposed to be the trimester of the best sleep you'll see for a very long time. Obviously, those who say that are not taking dogs into consideration. The night started out well; less lower back and hip pain than I've had in a long time actually. It was heavenly....until about 2am when the dogs started going nuts. No apparent cause after thoroughly checking things out. My husband and I tried unsuccessfully to go back to sleep. Finally, around 3:00, we each got a bowl of cereal. I skyped with my family overseas. (They're the only ones I knew who would be up at that time.) My husband got updates on the Boston marathon and I started in on one of my favorite pastimes of late. Blog hopping from one creative woman's site to the next.

I have so much to do when I get home! So many new projects I want to try! Somewhere in the midst of all my blog-hopping, I ended up on the site Living With Lindsay and I found the most adorable book wreath! To see Lindsay's tutorial, go here. This would have been one I'd take to Nana's at Christmas (see site's first post) if I weren't so concerned with ruining it in the roadtrip with a new baby, two dogs and car packed entirely too full. Below are pictures of her wreath. It's beautiful!

Isn't it just gorgeous??? I can't wait to try and make my own. I hope it will turn out half as well! I'll keep you posted. 

Now it's almost 4:30am. I think I'll try for another hour or so of sleep before our day begins....again.

How Cute Are These??

I was blog browsing this morning and ended up on the site House of Hepworths. She made these adorable decor balls that would TOTALLY match my living room! Check out the tutorial here. I cannot wait to get out of Mammoth Lakes and get to a craft store. I've got to try making these! 

While I was on the site, I also saw her large decor ball and fell in love with that one too! She made it using two items from the dollar store! Check out the picture below and the tutorial here. I'm so bummed that I missed her giveaway, but am definitely adding her site to my list of favorites. 

Isn't that beautiful! 

Still don't know all the blogging decorum right now, but as my only follower here on my second post is my mother, I figure I have time to learn all the ins and outs of the blogging culture. :D 

Happy Weekend, Everyone....I mean, "Mom." :D

How This Blog Came to Be...

We've been in Mammoth Lakes, CA for the better part of a month. It's the end of April and it's snowing... again. I'm a warm weather kind of gal myself and am more than ready to get home to southern California. While I've been hibernating indoors and trying to keep semi-warm, I've been purusing the web. Nana has a habit of not letting Christmas traditions get too worn out before she changes them. This past Christmas she announced that all gifts for our family's traditional game of "Dirty Santa" (also known as "Chinese Gift Exchange") would have to be homemade. There goes Dan's and my resolution to make it easy on ourselves this year and go the giftcard route. Sigh. Anyway, I digress. With the pending arrival of baby in the fall and the looming gift exchange soon after, I decided I'd better get a headstart on ideas. I'm not the craftiest girl I know. Actually, I don't even make the list. I'm one of the least creative people I've ever encountered. However, I can get very passionate about other people's discoveries and, when properly motivated or interested, can work very earnestly to learn how to mimic someone else's marvelous ideas. That is how I happened to be looking through blogs and websites for homemade Christmas gift ideas for this year's holiday. I was astounded by all that I found! There are some truly talented, gifted and incredibly creative women out there! I spent about three days (while the Mammoth snow kept coming down) looking through blog after blog after blog. I want to emulate these women!

That's when I decided to try my hand at having my own blog. We'll see how it goes.