Fabric Photoshop

I recently ordered some fabric swatches from this fantastic website. Carousel Designs is a baby bedding company but they have some really cute graphic fabrics. I want to make some curtains to go in our living room so I ordered a handful of swatches and quickly narrowed those down to 3 favorites. Step one was to use Frog Tape to stick them to the trim around the windows. This allowed me to get a bit of a visual as to how the finished product would work (sorry for the different shades of green on the walls. My white balance wasn't agreeing with me).

Option #1: Gray Ikat pattern with a yellow center.

Option #2: Green Ikat pattern with a blue center.

Option #3: Navy blue graphic pattern.

At this point Phil's favorite was option 2 and I was leaning towards option 1. I decided that I needed some better visual aids. Enter my buddy, Photoshop.

Option #1:

Option #2:

Option #3:

Phil was watching Ip Man 2 while I took pictures.

After these imperfect renderings I'm leaning towards Options #1 and #3. I think Option #2 is just a little too much green for the space. #1 is my current favorite but there's something about that graphic navy pattern in #3 that makes me a little giddy. 

What do you think? What's your favorite?

Christmas Crafts... a few months too late

Every Christmas I say I'm going to make something crafty or Pinterest inspired. This year I finally got my act together and did something!

Here was my Pinspiration. A snow globe made out of a wine glass or goblet. How precious is that??

I know a number of family members that would have enjoyed something like this to display at christmas so I set out to make 3 or 4 of them. However it was surprisingly difficult to find christmas-like miniatures.

I tracked down some fake trees pretty easily but had a hard time finding animals or people that were the right size and whatnot. Phil finally picked up a packet of miniatures from Hobby Lobby that had an eskimo, wolf, dog, elk, igloo, etc. While most of them wouldn't work there was a little elk that I thought would do the trick. Some hot glue and and glitter snow later and I had a wine glass snow globe:

Overall a pretty quick and painless project (once I found the materials). Merry Christmas!

Bathroom Painting

Once I got the hallway finished I got the urge to paint something else! The main bathroom was the most tempting because it had the least amount of trim to paint. Last Saturday I woke up and just thought, "I'm going to paint the bathroom today!" So, I did.

Here are the Before photos. Although they are after I took down the mirror and towel racks. Whoops.

After a Saturday of painting here's what I ended up with:

                                                 

                                                 

The bathroom is small so I had to stand inside the shower for this photo. I'd like to do something to the cabinetry and mirror at some point. Maybe paint or stain the cabinets? Definitely replace the hardware. Maybe spray paint the mirror frame an Oil Rubbed Bronze? A new light fixture would be fun too. Maybe some cute dangly pendant?

Oh, the decisions! We'll get there. In the meantime I like the color. I was hoping for more of a blue-green but this is good too. I'm definitely not re-painting this room anytime soon. On to the next!

Painting Bug

The first painting project I took on was painting the living room back in July. I still haven't shared pictures but those will have to come later because I don't have any good ones right now. I began painting the trim in the entry and hallway a few months ago and finally finished it up within the last few weeks!

Unfortunately the only real before picture I have is a screen shot from zillow when we were in the process of buying the house. As you can see it has the same wood trim as the rest of the house and a pink-ish paint color. The same paint is used throughout all of the bedrooms and depending on the light sometimes takes on a violet quality. Mostly it looks pink. I don't like it.

I started out with the best of intentions: sanding down the trim, taping everything off, painting. I quickly learned that I hate the prep work. I wasn't getting anything done because I despise sanding trim. I decided to skip that (probably critical) step. I might regret that in a year when the paint starts to chip and peel but, oh well! Yay instant gratification! Once I made that difficult decision the process moved along much quicker. I got all the trim painted and my mom was kind enough to help me knock out the walls (not literally).

Here's a view from the living room. Doesn't the white trim make everything look fresh and crisp? We plan to do something about the dark wood doors at some point. Not sure if we'll end up painting them or just buying new ones... that's still up in the air! Look at those pretty, green living room walls...yum!

Here's the view looking straight up the stairs. The color reads a little pinkish in the foreground but that's just the lighting. The wall at the end of the hall is pretty true to life.

Here's the opposite view looking down to the living room. 

It's definitely a big improvement over the pink walls!

I'll leave you with another living room sneak peak: