Don't Envy Me!

My life is about to get a whole lot easier. Our HP Envy laptop finally came in the mail yesterday!


I can't tell you how excited I am to have a home computer again. Weird how accustomed I've become to having one of these!

Blog Design & Other Ramblings

I've been having some fun playing around with the idea of updating my blog header. I found this website via Pinterest and have pretty much been going crazy playing with all the fun FREE designs and templates she has on her site.


I like the picture that is currently my header, a shot from our tent when we were camping at the beach a few years ago. But we don't live in California or live by a beach, so I'm not sure how it really relates to this blog. Maybe something more graphic would be more appropriate.

I am in love with gray, so of course I love this one, but at the same time I hope it’s not too dull and boring.

I like that this one has the gray but has more pops of (my favorite) color. Of course, that color doesn’t really match anything else on my page, so I’m not so sure how that would work.


I love the chevron design I found on the page, but am afraid I might have made this header a bit too complicated and over loaded.

Lastly, I love the hexagonal maps, but again, I’m not really sure how that would relate to this blog. I use to do a lot of traveling, but I’ve definitely settled down now that I’m married, have an 8-5 job, with a mortgage and the whole bit.

Who knows, maybe I’ll keep playing around with it. It is so much fun. In my dreams I have a job as a photographer, graphics designer, or interior designer. Mostly just something that is visual and creative. But sadly, in reality I have neither the skills nor the talent yet. I like that I can mess around with that kind of stuff here on the blog. Makes lunches at work MUCH more entertaining!

(Just as an FYI, I made these without having photo shop by using Microsoft Word Power Point, which I then saved as a PDF, and then a JPEG. )

In other rambling news Jeff bought us a new computer the other day and I am SO EXCITED! His last computer purchase was not my favorite (crashing every few minutes!), but I’m hoping this computer has more staying power. I’m also excited that this one is a laptop so I won’t be relegated to the office but can move around my house with my computer. I can't wait to get it all set up!

Some more house hold news, KB Homes (our homes builder) was recently involved in a class action lawsuit and lost. This means that we are getting our home re-plumbed in April. That's right, our kitchen, bathrooms, and dry wall are all at the mercy of the construction crew the courts appointed to fix all of KB's shoty plumbing. I'm kind of nervous to have our home re-plumbed. It sounds so intrusive, so I hope all goes well.

This also means that I'm definitely going to hold off on any updates or painting until the construction is done. I'd hate to put up board and batten in the bathrooms just to have it torn down in a month. This also will give us more time to collect some change to save up for the bathroom renovations.

And the last big thing that is going on in the Bame house these days is that we are looking to adopt a dog!
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I can't wait to walk the dog and go on hikes with a cute little pup. Now, after a few months of having to wake up early to walk the dog, I may not be so excited, but for now I am. We are still struggling to get pregnant and I think Jeff knows if I don't have something to mother soon I may be feeding him with airplane sounds, bathing him, and putting him in his PJ's every night. That energy will be better directed to pets for now!

We are looking to adopt a female dog who is around 15-20 pounds. Still youngish- maybe under 2 years old. We want a dog who is active, intelligent, and good with children and our cat. We are totally okay with mutt, but are using dogs like a Shetland Sheltie or Italian Greyhound as our models for what we'd prefer.

If you know of any please let us know. I'm finding that the animal shelters around here are very competitive. I'll see a dog one day, go to take Jeff to see it that night and they'll already be gone! But we'll end up getting the dog that's right for us someday, even if it takes a bit of time. We are use to taking our time with things!

Master Bathroom Plans

I have some big plans for our Master Bathroom in addition to our Guest Bathroom, since really we should be taking care of that one first, as it’s the bathroom we use every day.



1) I have always liked Navy, White and Gray for bathrooms, and since we have Navy accents all over our master bedroom, I think this color combo will fit right in. I still want to paint the bathroom cabinet white, like in the guest bathroom, and above the board and batten we’ll paint a nice dark navy (like in the picture, which can be found here.) Our master bathroom has the most sunlight in our entire house, so I’m pretty sure it can handle a dark paint color. We'll see.

2) I’m still hoping I can score a deal on some new lighting for both bathrooms, but if I only find one sweet deal, it is definitely going to be going in this bathroom!

3) I like the idea of putting up some nautical or ocean like art and accessories to bring up the room a notch. This is a free print from the NYPL Digital Gallery. (I can get lost on that website for hours). I don't want it to scream NAUTICAL THEME in your face, but a few touches will go a long way. I'm really digging all this stuff with octopus prints lately.

4) We still want to DIY board and batten along with some new base boards. I think putting it in both upstairs bathrooms will add some character to this cookie cutter.

5) Again, the same cork tiles as the guest bathroom. Keeping a lot of the same materials in both spaces will help the upstairs flow well.

6) I really want to try my hand at this DIY shower curtain. It seems simple enough, and I love the thin blue strips and ruffles. It totally floats my boat! Oh, I can tell limiting the nautical touches is going to be hard for me!

GRANDmothers are GRAND

This past weekend I made a quick trip up to see my Grandma for her eighty . . . I mean her 25th birthday. I love this women so much!


When I was in college, just up the road from my grandparents, I would come to visit pretty often. She and I would sit in her livingroom until the wee hours of the morning talking long after everyone else in the house had gone to bed.

I am so glad to get to know my grandparents better as an adult. They were great when I was a kid too, but as an adult I get to know them more as a person. I always say I was blessed with the best grandparents ever, and it is so true! I am the luckest of girls.

One of my favorite stories of my grandmothers (who actually doesn't tell it, my grandpa is the one who spills the beans) is that when she got her first job and received her very own paycheck, the first thing she went to buy was for her mother. That purchase? A fur coat. This is so like my grandmother. She is always thinking of others first, she has always been a classy women, and she has always had good taste! I hope she had a great birthday with all of us kids, grandkids and even great grandkids. She deserves the best.

Guest Bathroom Plans

In vain I have struggled, it will not due. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I want to renovate you!

It looks like bathroom renovations are making the rounds. I’ve recently seen these other bathroom renovations from other bloggers (here and here). Ugly bathrooms everywhere beware!

A couple weekends ago Jeff and I made a trip to Lowes to investigate this Board and Batten business I’ve been day dreaming about. We played around in the isles with different boards and trim to see what we’d like. We even came home with some boards.


Here is a secret about me, which anyone reading this blog could probably tell; I am not the biggest detail person when it comes to home design. I am more of a big picture kind of gal. I’m not too worried if what I’m doing is the correct way or will stand the test of time, as long as I get the overall look I’m after then I’m usually happy. (I am totally the opposite at work- perfectionist with everything. It’s weird.)

This drives Jeff NUTS! He doesn’t like to do the work necessarily, but he likes things done the right way and to perfection. If something isn’t straight or isn’t smooth with one of my home projects it eats at him until he has to fix it. He is my detail man.

Well, with the Board and Batten, I had chosen to follow this tutorial and use polyboard so the boards would be thin enough that I wouldn’t have to buy new base boards. When we tested it out in the isle of Lowes however, we realized that our cheap builder grade base boards were still a little too thin for the polyboards. Jeff knew the boards not sitting flush would drive him crazy.

Then we tried it with the baseboards we are replacing the downstairs with after the flood. They fit much better. After some discussion we decided this was the way to go. We’d just have to replace the baseboards anyways and suck up the cost. And if we were replacing the baseboards then we really ought to just tackle the floors at the same time. And if we were going to do all this work then we’d better do it the right way and start from the ground up instead of working from top to bottom. Oh, and we’d better do it for both upstairs bathrooms.

That’s right; we are just getting too far into it. I guess we both are annoyed by the bathrooms enough that I think my priming adventure is going to turn into two bathroom renovations or face lifts. What have I done? I’m still kind of hesitant to start with bathroom renovations when we have other priorities in our lives that should be taking precedent. Jeff’s answer to my hesitation was to just use what we’ve got. I always like this answer. So what have we got that we can use to fund these bathroom reno’s?


(Pic found here.)

We are going to just use what we have in our change piles around the house (all over the house), which is usually the change in Jeff’s pockets and the tips he gets at work. It may just take us forever, but at least we will be working towards more beautiful bathrooms and not dipping into any savings.

Trying desperately to bridal myself, I have come up with the following plan for the guest bathroom:

I need to plan this whole thing out in the beginning because it may take a very long time to get this all done using change from around the house! Here's the details (mostly so I remember).

1) Paint and accessories: I want to somehow use the dark gray and bright olive green that are on the shower curtain to inspire the paint color and the accessories that go into the room.

2) Lighting: This will probably be the last thing we put in the room, if even. The lighting that is in there works fine, but hollywood lights bug me, so if I can find a good deal I'll switch the lights out. (This fixture can be found here.)

3) Paint Cabinets: I plan to paint our vanity white (using the tutorial from here). The cabinet already has a lot of paint spills on it from the previous owners and the wood veneer itself doesn't seem to be standing up very well. A fresh coat of paint would do the vanity good.

4) Board & Batten: Hurray for installing some molding interest!

5) Cork Tiles: We want to lay down some cork tiles down in both bathrooms. Cork is a classic material used in bathrooms in other parts of the world and can stand up to moisture when properly treated. Plus another great bonus is that Jeff and I can do the labor ourselves, which we would not be able to do with installing tile in a second story bathroom with slanted floors. We like a medium toned brown, found this one at Lowes, but we'll shop around for the best price.

6) Change Shower Curtain: This is the current shower curtain in our master bathroom (it is olive green and gray, just a bad phone picture). I've always planned on moving it to the guest bath, which will one day be the kids bathroom. I love that it is really fun and kind of reminds me of bubbles but it doesn't scream KIDS BATHROOM!

This isn't really that much work, but knowing us and working with a pretty much non-existent budget, even this much work will probably take us a long time. Like, a really long time knowing us, but I refuse to lose hope. The bathrooms in this house are going to get better!

Of course this isn't everything on my wish list. I'd love to start from scratch, or at least change out the tub/showers and all the hardware, but I can deal with builder grade faucets and laminate counter tops in this house. That money will be better spent when we've settled into our forever home and not our home for right now.

How to Make a Moss Covered Letter- My Easter B

After perusing Pinterest last week for cute Easter decorations I decided to go home and make myself some Easter inspired décor. I started with the moss covered letter from here.


I kind of decided to make it before I ever hit up a store or anything. I was waiting for dinner to be cooked and decided to start doodling a “B” stencil outof an empty cereal box we had sitting by the kitchen trash can. Hey, I was bored and inspired, so it works.


Once I had cut it out I realized that it probably wasn’t thick enough to attach moss to, so I traced the stencil and cut it out of an empty cardboard box I had in the garage.


I glued the two “B” stencils together, just to make it a bit stronger, and because I had both cut out already, so I used them both. Once I had glued the two together I started to paint them with the 2 colors of green craft paint I had on hand. I have never done anything with moss before, so I wanted to make sure that if it didn’t give full coverage that the green paint would show through and not old trashed cardboard. I painted both the front and back. On the back I epoxied a soda tab at the top so that I could loop some ribbon through it later for hanging. By now my dinner was done. (Ding! Hello pot pie!)


The next day on my way home from work I picked up a few supplies at Michaels. One of course being moss ($7 before coupon), and the other I’ll get to in a bit. When I got home I traced and cut out my “B” stencil from the moss. I traced it a little bigger than the actual stencil because I had not worked with it before and I wasn’t too sure if I'd need extra moss. (Any extra I ended up folding over the cardboard “B” later, but I don’t think it was necessary. Especially with how thin my “B” was.)


Next I took my glue gun and just glued the moss to my cardboard, folding over any edges when needed, until I got the look I wanted.

I left it alone for another day and let it all dry. I filled in any sparsely covered spots with the lose moss I had from cutting out the moss stencil the day before. Once it was all purty I looped some ribbon through the soda tab and hung my new wreath from our living room mirror.

Don't mind the lines on the wall, that's just a shadow from the blinds. I should have pulled them up.


I lurve it! It seems fresh like spring to me.

My other Michaels purchase was a bag of eggs ($6 bucks before a coupon). I had some Martha Stewart Glitter that I picked up at TJ Max for $3 over a year ago. I’ve wanted to have some glittery Easter eggs ever since the purchase, so I just decided to do it already.


Once I got home though I thought the Michaels eggs were a little too purty to put glitter all over them, so I decided to split them up and glitter some and not glitter some.


No tutorial needed here really, I just painted the eggs with Elmer’s glue and sprinkled with glitter until it was all covered then let fully dry.


Along with my one other previous Easter décor . . . (Peep Calm and Carry on printable from here)

I now have a few other items to add to the collection. I am still considering making a bunting banner from burlap that says “He is Risen”, but for now I think I am good. My house seems much more Easterfied!

Pinterest Pickings- Easter

I made a goal with myself this past Christmas that I should try and add one decoration per holiday, every year. (Maybe not every holiday, but the ones I like.) Valentines totally passed me without too much thought, but I’ve already got my eyes on Easter. I love Easter and the real reasons for its celebration, not so much for the fake grass, plastic bunnies and all that. Although, the fact that Easter does have the best candy (hello Cadbury eggs!) doesn’t hurt.

Even though I love Easter, I have pretty much null in terms of festive decorations. Easter decorations seem to go cheap and corny pretty easily. There has to be some pretty and tasteful Easter décor out there, right? So, I turned to my favorite pal Pinterest to look for some Easter DIY inspiration and found some really cool ideas that would make for doable DIY decorations.

Wreaths:


I love this moss initial from here


This adorable wreath from here

Eggs:


This cool idea to decoupage eggs (could do with wood eggs too) from here


I love this idea to bring in the resurrection into your Easter decor. I would put "He is Risen" on mine. Find it here


I already have some Martha Stewart glitter for these eggs.

Other:


I have always wanted one of these Easter trees, but I can't ever seem to find the right branches.
This has totally gotten me motivated to make at least one thing this year for Easter. I was also thinking of trying to start a tradition of maybe making a breakfast quiche or a pear tartine or something every Easter morning. Or maybe reading about Christs resurrection before heading out to church. It totally handle some family traditions.