Tuesday, February 28, 2012

The Ugliest Room in my House!

The playroom! Were coming up on 2 years in the Unicorn house and the playroom has always been ugly. It was the room I never wanted to show people… "And here’s the playroom with deep red carpet up the walls and dark paneling…" Yeah. This is real life in a 1970's house!
A couple of weekends ago we started working on it, just painting the paneling for now. Anyways, Ben convinced me that blue would be a great color for the walls. It will totally go with maroon carpet. Ha I don’t even know why I bought the paint!
Yeah not so much…
Last Friday I went and bought primer, we were going to primer the heck out of the paneling and paint it with a nice off white. Brighten the whole room up!
Literally, painting paneling is hell…
I wish I had amazingly beautiful after pictures, but I don’t. 2 coats of primer and 3 coats of paint later and were still not done. Agh! It’s really looking better but it’s nowhere near where I want it. Honestly I don’t think anything we do is going to matter if that hideous carpet is still there. Here’s a sort of during. About 5pm Sunday night I was over it! We put the room back together decided to finish the rest of the painting slowly.
Agh that carpet! The color on the walls is Behr Apricot White, it has slight pink undertones. I did use some on the blue paint Ben suggested in the closet, since its Ms. Layla’s favorite color.  At this point I’m just over it, you’ve defeated me playroom. I think it’s back to the drawing board time

Monday, February 27, 2012

Sunday Funday!

Yesterday I got to do something I’ve waited a long time to do! Since I was 20 weeks pregnant and the ultrasound tech said it’s a girl!
Layla and I went and got Mani’s and Pedi’s!!!
Ha! She looks a little frighten here!





Being Silly!
It was a lot of fun! She was so good and sat so still! (Something she never does for me when I paint her nails!) Afterwards she said it was so much fun! Daddy wasn’t too happy that she picked out red for her hands but it was a special treat so I let it slide.
And on a different note, I have perfected the Oatmeal Raisin Cookie:
Bad cell picture, but oh so good!

Friday, February 24, 2012

Weekend!

After a 4 day weekend last weekend 2 days doesn’t seem like enough. Tonight we have plans for dinner out and a stop by Home Depot for primer for the playroom. Extremely dark paneling you are about to get prettied! And I am so excited to get that room put back together! Not sure if you read Our Fifth House, but Carmel posted yesterday about a Kitchen in a Closet. Basically she put her daughters play kitchen in a closet and made it look awesome!  I might have to steal this idea, although the playroom closet is nothing like theirs, I think taking the door off and a sunny paint color would be exactly what it needs!
Saturday we are attacking above mentioned playroom! Saturday night we have friends coming over. And Sunday… Gosh I don’t know! I would love to go pick up my free armoire from my Mom so I can start painting it but we will see!
Have a wonderful weekend!! Were supposed to have a storm roll in tonight! Hoping I wake up to this:
Snowy Spokane! Riverfront Park

Thursday, February 23, 2012

Painting Sidekick

Whenever I am painting (or doing anything) this little big sweet Dog is always right by my side! Elmer Douglas is going to be 10 this summer!!! I can’t believe it! When I was 19 I moved into a rented house with a bunch of friends and decided I needed a dog. I was at a Money Tree with a friend talking about it and the teller said, “I have a dog that I need to get rid of”… FATE! He was just a puppy and her older lab was being mean to him. She said he is Bulldog & Jack Russell Terrier… WHAT?! Thinking he would be small and stocky we went to go look at him and instantly fell in love! 75 pounds later, we realized he is an American Bulldog/J.R. Terrier!
One of the best decisions I ever made was to take this guy home!

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Tuesday!

I am all alone in the office today, so this will be short and sweet! I had a wonderful 4 day weekend! Layla and I had a long visit with her favorite (& only) Uncle Eddie, Ben and I watched movies, a Ladies night Saturday, sleeping in on Sunday, finished the stairs on the Chevron wall, a big nap and some shopping!  

Some positive words I added to our chalkboard wall yesterday:

Have a fab Tuesday!!!

Thursday, February 16, 2012

...

Hello Thursday Night!


Mix Mash

Hola! Throwing a post together today. I am insanely busy at work! My co worker recently left our bank so our tiny 3 person Credit Card Dept. is now even smaller and tiny-er with just me and my Boss. Anyone want to work in a bank?? Lol, but seriously anyone in Eastern WA?
Ben and his buddy at work were having a beard growing contest. Well his co worker caved and shaved (ha that rhymed) last weekend but Ben hasn’t. I took this trying out a Retro Camera App I downloaded so you can’t really see the hugeness of it but it’s large! I know a lot of women who are anti beard but I really like it. Just maybe a little shorter and trimmed up.

When we ran to Home Depot for Caterpillar Green paint, Layla noticed the orange gates at the end of each row they have to block the rows off. Anyways so were looking at light fixtures and she’s playing with one then we start walking to somewhere else and she runs in front of me to play with another one trips over my shoes and falls face first into the damn gate.
Lots of blood and a fat lip later! Poor Kiddo! She’s totally fine now and by Monday she was excited to get to school and show it off.
And here's Layla's Valentines we made! Melted crayons:
I’m off tomorrow and Monday for Presidents day! Have a fabulous weekend!

Monday, February 13, 2012

Caterpillar Green

Yesterday morning I woke up and wanted to paint something. I have been talking to Ben a bit about painting our main bathroom a bright green. Green is my all time favorite color. So after a quick trip to Home Depot and a few hours later we now have a bright green bathroom!
Caterpillar Green

All my accessories were already black and white so nothing really changed I just shopped around my house a bit.


Where the photo above is, there used to be a medicine cabinet. I never liked it and there was hardly anything in it so I took it down. This photo is not permanent but I needed something for the space.  

It’s definitely now the boldest room in the house!

Friday, February 10, 2012

Eye Candy Friday

Hooray it's Friday!

Here's some pretty things to look at: 





 My Mom is giving me her huge computer armorie and I have plans to turn it into a bar. I haven't found much inspiration...

This weekend I have plans to draw the rest of the Chevron wall and take Layla to see the Muppets at our local discount theater.

Have a fabulous weekend!

All images are from my Pinterest


Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Picture Post

This post is just a bunch of pictures J
Ben & Elmer. I love it when his bottom tooth sticks out, such a goofy dog!

Layla at Jump n’ Bounce. This was our first time there. It’s basically a bunch of blow up jumpy toys in a warehouse and you can run around a play!



Ben at Jump n’ Bounce looking kind of sweaty! Gross, but he was literally like a 5 year old. Right before this picture he asked,”Can we have my birthday here this year?”

Then he hurt himself…

My little Sweetie! She just got her bangs cut and we were headed for a Mommy & Layla target trip.
And a sweet picture of my Girl. We had a Saturday morning to ourselves!

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Rockford the Fireplace

2 posts in 1 day!!! I finally have a few minutes to talk about finishing up the fireplace!! It was no easy task and it made me a little crazy but it look so much better!! Here’s the before:
Such a monstrosity!!!
When we first moved in I really like it. I liked the how the two vents and the actually fireplace looked like a face. (Hence naming it Rockford) but then as my living room started coming together it was looking more and more out of place. We thought about taking the fake rock off and dry walling then tiling or something but that seemed expensive. I think we might eventually do that but for now I already had the paint and decided to just go for it. You can read about the insane task of painting it here.
After I finished painting it. It’s actually more gray then white…

Then as I mentioned before my Step Dad Tommy works in construction and at the time he was building a house way up in the woods! The property owner had a mini mill and was mostly using trees from his property to build the house. I happened to call Tommy at just the right time saying I need a fireplace mantel! I really really need one! At work the next day, talks to the extremely nice homeowner and he trots down to his mill and makes me a mantel! For free!!! I couldn’t believe I was so lucky!
One day while  I was at work Tommy came and cut the rocks and installed the mantel for me! It was a little scary to walk in and see missing rocks but he assusred me he could fix it. After this step there was so much dust! it was nuts how much dust fake rocks make!


After 2 coats of dark mahogany stain
Finally after the rocks were reattached and 5 coats of stain. Excuse the Christmas stockings, this happened awhile ago.
Up close of the wood detail, I wanted it rough looking and grainy


And here's what it looked like last weekend after I added some paper bag hearts for Valentine’s Day:


So much better!!!


Layla’s Room

Layla Lou’s room is always a work in progress. Just last Sunday I moved it around again. She’s finally in her big girl bed, which I never painted. It’s too cold now so whatever it can be half painted thru the winter. It looks sort of shabby chic or something.
One day a few weeks ago I was reading thru my blog roll and saw Effortless Style did a post about Tagxedo. Tagxedo lets you make fun word clouds:

They have a ton of shapes and all you do is put in as many words as you can think of, pick a shape, pick a color scheme and bam you have super cute FREE art!
Here’s the one I made for Layla’s room:



Monday, February 6, 2012

Chevron Wall

So I know I’ve been missing lately and I don’t have an excuse or anything. Just kind of lost the blogging bug for a bit.
Anyways I saw this beautiful wall on Pinterest and fell in love!




I started making plans to have a Chevron Wall somewhere in my house! Enter the wall at the top of the stairs!  I haven’t found anything I really liked there and it was annoying. So one Friday night after the kiddo went to bed I forced Ben to draw it out. J He always starts out grumpy about projects then about 5 minutes in he’s on board and excited about it.

I didn’t take a before picture, so I found kind of sort of one on my facebook.
And the after:



No real directions since they can be found anywhere on the Google Machine. Break the wall out into a big grid and connect the dots. J I have plans to continue it down the stairs and around the corner down the next set of stairs but Ben’s in charge of the math part so I’m at his mercy!

See part 2 here: http://bklhome.blogspot.com/2012/03/chevron-wall-part-2.html

Linking up with: 
Thrifty Decor Chick 
 DIY ShowOff

Friday, February 3, 2012

Coming out of Blog Hiding...

For SUYL with Kellly's Korner, this week is Show us your Singles!

Meet Jen:

32, Eastern Washington

Jen is a middle school math/science teacher for "at risk" kids. (basically they get kicked out of regular school and go to her school) We've known each other just over 5 years and she is amazing!!! Seriously one of the funniest people I know. My kiddo adores her! Like I think she might love her as much (or more) as she loves me :)


She's Fun! She loves relaxing at home, camping, hiking, shopping, and just about anything. This girl is always down for adventure. She owns her own home, loves to travel New York is one of her favorite places to visit.


Her family is very important to her, she loves her nieces, nephews and her Layla :) She hopes to one day have a kid of her own.

Interested? Wanta know more? Drop me an email kristakins26@gmail.com or leave a comment.