Be Our Guest!

Holy cow it's been a while since my last project/post!  We have been through a lot in this last year with some family and their friends living with us off and on so our guest room was always full with someone else's stuff.  Well we finally have the house to ourselves again!  As soon as the room was empty I cleaned it up, scrubbed EVERYTHING, and got to work making it ours again.

Now I'm done and it's my favorite room so far!!!

I always loved the idea of crisp, white, spa-like hotel rooms so I wanted to model our guest room after that.  My husband and I love hosting family and friends whether its just for a bar-b-que in the back yard, overnight, or for a weekend so naturally I wanted to create a space where they will have the most relaxing experience.

Here's a sneak peak:

Before I show off the whole room, let's take a look at what it looked like before!

It was so generic before with the tan walls.  I also had wall art that blended in too much with the walls and the curtains definitely didn't pop.

Naturally I hit Pinterest and tried to decide on a color scheme and decor.  I found these pins that really made me want to go spend a night in these rooms. (click here for my whole guest room inspiration board)

So I decided on a dark blue/grey color with white accessories because I saw this pin:

Ok here it is!!  My finished guest room!

I do wish we had a double bed in here but that's not quite in the budget right now.  But I do have a white full size comforter that I got free from my cousin so I'm ready when we get a new bed! :).

I just love the white accessories and curtains and I LOVE this comforter from Wayfair!  It's so cozy and pretty and I want to sleep here! Now let's take a closer look at the decor because I got almost all of the ideas from Pinterest.

Inspiration pin on top and then my version underneath.

 

           Inspiration                           

                                    Reality

I think I've shown this one in my post "Print your heart out" because I just worked this up in Microsoft word and added some clip art, print, frame and voila, beautiful art!  Plus I love Beauty and the Beast so of course this needed to be in the guest room!

 

                Inspiration                         

                               Reality

I love this one and the next one.  I printed the little "Blessed" sign and used mod podge to put the glitter stripes and the sign on a canvas.  (How-to post coming soon!)

 

                Inspiration                         

                              Reality

I love the lettering and they look great!! Who doesn't love a little sparkle?

 

                Inspiration                         

                                 Reality

Little touches like the "get cozy" tag and a blanket make your guests feel well taken care of knowing that there are extra blankets in case they get cold during the night.

            

                Inspiration                         

                                     Reality

The pictures of the ocean in the inspiration pin seemed so relaxing and beautiful to me.  In my version I used pictures from various vacations that I've been on.  Top left is the Ferris wheel on the Navy Pier in Chicago, next to that is Santa Monica beach in California.  Bottom left is the sunset over the ocean on Maui and last is a view of downtown Chicago close to Millennium Park.

                Inspiration                         

                                     Reality

For those of you who don't know me, my husband and I have 3 cats and a dog and there's nothing cozier than snuggling up with a kitty and taking a nap.  I definitely wanted to bring some of this into the guest room.  I found the inspiration pin and it didn't seem too hard to draw so I took a sharpie and just went for it.  I added the "Snuggle up" from printing it off the computer and mod podging it onto a white painted board from Hobby Lobby.

My finishing touch doesn't have an inspiration pin because it was created about 40 years before Pinterest was around: 

There's a little reflection on this from the window but it's a chalk drawing my mom did in high school that's an abstract picture of a woman holding her baby.  It's always fun to have a family treasure like that around.  

Fun fact! that picture is hanging right above the rocking chair that belonged to my Grandma (my mom's mom) when she was in high school! 

This rocking chair is actually a makeover of it's own because it used to look like this:

This, I'm sure was beautiful in my Grandmother's room many moons ago but I love that I could take it and make it my own while keeping the sentimental value.

I am in love with this room and we've had several happy house guests since then. Here are all the close ups of the decor that I haven't talked about yet:

I actually took  these pictures of my hands in black and white with an artistic tree background.

I still want to makeover this dresser, but I haven't found any drawer pulls that are big enough for these.  It's quite frustrating.

Hope you enjoyed this little make over!

Which room in your house is your favorite?

Pretty new table!!!

Sorry for being away so long but life has been crazy.  We had my brother in law living with us for a bit and we all know how interesting that can be.  Anyway back to the pretty!  We had such a sad old hand-me-down table that I got for free from my boss several years ago.


Does everyone remember what the table we had before looked like from my dining room post?











It's so small and dated and there was a bum leg on the table and all the chairs kept coming apart at the bottoms and I was always afraid the next person to sit down would fall onto the floor with white wood pieces flying in the air.


So of course I went to Pinterest to see what I wanted to have in our newly painted dining room and here is what my inspiration pin was.







Love the farmhouse table look and the color of the dark wood is amazing!  James was going to build me one to look very similar to this one for Christmas but time got away from us and we ended up just buying one.  So here is our new dining set!!!







I LOVE it!! The color is right, the size is right, the X on the chairs is awesome, and the cats approve! It also makes me love the paint color and the curtains I have now even more!


Since it was around Christmas time I wanted to set the table with my new dishes I bought with my Christmas money.  It was so pretty!!!  Take a look







I am so in love.  Plus it has a fold out leaf right in the table!  I can't wait to have a dinner party and put it to use! Anyone want to come over?  Ha how about another look of it!





And another!





And see what I mean about the curtains!  I'm still not convinced they will stay but I'll keep them a little longer than before.


Ok well again, I'm sorry about the long time away but things have settled down a bit now and I should have some more time on my hands.


Did anyone else get anything exciting over the holiday?

Stripes part 2 - hallway is complete...for now

Everyone remembers my beautiful, gorgeous, perfect hallway makeover right?  Oh you need to see it again? Ok great no problem:

I'm still in love! And if we remember from this post, I decided I needed to print lots more pictures to complete the hallway, because the stripes are great but they're even better with some jewelry.

Well I dressed up another wall between the dining room and the guest bedroom.

I love the giant key!!!  Plus the little Fairy Tales Do Come True sign, and the other door knobs and the same pose for our engagement and wedding picture on the right side there.  (It's hard to see but we spell out LOVE with our fingers, stinkin' cute, I know.)  All these items were either bought at Goodwill, on clearance at Target, or given as gifts so this section of the wall was really cheap which always makes me happy!

I found the Home, Fairy Tales Do Come True, several of the frames and the giant key all at a thrifting trip with my cousin Katie.  She is the Queen of thrifting and she loves taking people along and helping them find great stuff for cheap.  She has her own thrifty blog that's definitely worth  checking out!  I don't remember for sure but I think I only spent $7 on those items at Goodwill. Love it!

I also did a little family picture wall between the dining room door and the office.  I hope to add more family pictures to this wall over time, both old, like my grandparents and great-grandparents wedding pictures and new pictures that we have yet to take.

To my mother, and mother-in-law, I need some more family pictures!  Let's get that set up sometime soon, deal? Good.

So here's what the whole hallway looks like with all my pictures up. :)

I know it's not the best angle, but it's really hard to take good pictures of long spaces :(

Oh well, I'm still in love with this transformation especially compared to the gross green it was before.

Eewwwww! 

So I'll keep adding to the hallway forever and rearranging and all that, plus I need a new light fixture because the one that's in there now is sad and definitely doesn't give off enough light:

 but for now I love it just the way the hallway is.  So classy and a sure fire conversation starter with the stripes.

Until next time, everyone stay classy!  Has anyone tried painting your own stripes yet?  Here's how!

A little paint goes a long way-Dining Room edition

To continue the tour through the process of making our house into our home, I'll show you our dining room next.

Here's what it looked like when we moved in.

Not too shabby, but I wasn't quite loving the tan color, I wanted something that would go a little bit better with the chandelier, plus I wanted a color that would compliment the gray color we painted in the living room because there is a big opening between the two rooms.

I wanted something fresh bright and clean like this dining room I found on Pinterest:



So we decided to go with a gray tinted white, called mink frost.

Let's get into the before and afters.

Before:

And After:

I love the way the paint color makes the wall decor pop!  It looks so much better than with the tan.

It's so much brighter and it makes me happier :). My next few projects for the dining room include finding a bold pattern for the curtains because the ones I have now are not quite what I'm looking for and I'm not loving the brown.  I did get them for free from my cousin so that's always good!  I know I can use them somewhere, I just don't want that place to be my dining room.  Maybe in the office or the guest room.

  I want to go floor to ceiling with them but we'll see what I can afford.  I also want to upgrade the table, either get a new one or stain and repaint the one we have.  If I get a new one, I'm definitely getting a bigger table.  The dining room certainly has the space for a bigger one.  Money will be the deciding factor.  We shall have to see what comes out of it.

I'd love to get a buffet or a china hutch to put in the dining room but I'm not sure where I could fit one.

Hope you enjoyed my dining room tour.  Do you approve of the change?  Know of any awesome patterned curtains for cheap?