New Year, New Look

I’ve decided on a fresh new look for my blog.  I’ve been wanting brighter colors in my life to inspire me.  And maybe I’m just a bit ready for spring to be here already.  But after an obscene amount of time trying to get the formatting to work, I’m finally happy with it.  It gives me a renewed energy and a sense of creativity.  I LOVE it!!!!

I’ve added a section on the right called A Few of my Favorite Things.  Here I will post pictures of things that make me feel joy and peace.  Things that make me truly happy.

Well here it is.  I hope you like it too.

Rebecca

Merry Christmas!!!

Well I had certainly intended to share so much more with you this December.  Holiday traditions, decorations, and gift ideas, for example.  But, alas, this blog is an outlet just for me. My family come first.  So I spent the season very busy with the kids, family, and a little crafting.

I also found some time to do a little shopping at an antique store.  That’s where I found this beauty!  Merry Christmas to me from my mom and daddy.  :)
    

I decorated her for Christmas as soon as she got in the door.   I used ornament balls from the dollar store and the thrift store under the cake dome.  The doily underneath was made by my late Aunt Martha.   The tiny crochet stitches are so intricate and beautiful.

The Christmas dishes I inherited from my sister when she no longer wanted them.  Yes, there is a salad plate missing.


And some tatted and crocheted snowflake ornaments.  My mother is an avid tatter and made me a bunch of these.  I did the round crocheted ones.



I love having another area to decorate for the holidays, but my favorite part of the bakers rack is the chicken wire mesh doors.  Perfect place to store my home canned goods.



I wish all of you a very blessed Christmas.  I pray the peace of the Christ child will fill you and your families in the coming year.

Rebecca

Little Girl’s Room Wall Art and Reveal

Okay, so now that I’ve finished the painting, trimming, stenciling, and curtains in my little girl room,  I’ll show you some simple wall decor I did.  Then, I’ll do a quick room reveal from start to finish.  I love the peacefulness of the lavender colors in this room.  To be honest, some days when the little ones are napping, I go sit in there and just enjoy the serenity.

On the walls I wanted to put verses from Proverbs 31 to  inspire my daughters to be kind, loving and God-centered women.  But when I priced custom vinyl lettering… OUCH!  I could MAYBE afford one, but not all eight that I wanted to do.

Here’s my creative and much MUCH cheaper solution.  For under $15 I purchased a package of 10 clear, full sheet labels from Amazon.

                




They work in an inkjet printer, so I picked my favorite font,  Pavane, and designed my verses to fit on an 8.5 X 11 inch paper which I then cut out.  Here’s the end result.





I ended up printing 7 of them.  The last one I printed on Sew-In Computer Printer Fabric that I got at Jo-Ann’s a while back.


 




With a coupon, it was less then a dollar per fabric sheet.  Then I sewed the fabric sheet into a pillow.

 


And now to reveal the room redo from start to finish…. Drum roll please…

Original Wall Color 
 

Lavender Paint in Two Tones shown here

 

Chair Rail Added shown here



Stenciling Completed shown here




Curtains Sewn & Hung shown here




And last, the completed room:  Bible versus on the wall. Furniture moved back in place (I would LOVE new furniture, but alas, that’s not in the budget);  My favorite quilt and pillows on the bed (I made these years ago).  When my little one is ready to come out of the crib, we’ll put rails on the bed and move her in.  Until then, Grandma and Grandpa still have a place to sleep.   :o)



Hope you enjoyed it.  Have a great day!

Rebecca

Joining the party at:





 

Little Girl’s Room Makeover – Step One

Why is this redo going so S – L – O – W – L – Y?
With the delivery of our newborn very VERY close, I’ve been trying to get motivated to work on the “Little Girl Room” which sister will have to move into when she vacates the nursery for the new baby.  Unfortunately I do NOT have the “nesting” instinct and would much rather stay in bed most of the time.  So the project has been very slow going.

BUT… to motivate myself, I decided to post my progress as I go.  I’m hoping this will help me to keep on track and keep going.

STEP ONE (anyone else just have a NKOTB flashback?)
The first step is to get rid of those bland, pale walls.  When we built the house, the builder allowed us to choose two paint colors at no extra cost.  So we picked a neutral color for most of the house and a greenish tone for the kitchen/breakfast area.  The thought was, as we decide what other colors we want, we will repaint those rooms ourselves.

It’s Unfortunate…
I had taken LOTS of before pics of the room in question when it was decorated as our guest room, but those pics were on our laptop which was recently stolen.  I’m sorry I can’t share them with you, but here are a couple pics of the wall color before it was painted.  The original color is Sherwin Williams “Crisp Linen”. 



A time for Peace, Serenity, Calm…
Lately I’ve been attracted to the serenity and calm of the bluish lavender colors.  I decided to do a two tone room and divide the colors with a chair rail. 
On the top half of the wall I used Valspar 4001-7B Lavender Mist interior satin.


The bottom half of the wall was painted with Valspar 4002-7C Purple Freedom interior satin.


This is how the walls look with the paint up, but no chair rail yet.

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I hope to post Step Two soon… which will be the addition of the chair rail.


Oh… where is that energy?…  Wish me luck.  More on this room later… but hopefully not TOO much later.

Rebecca

Cutter Quilt Pillows

Well, I’ve been spending a lot of time these last few weeks on bed rest while we wait for our little one to enter the world.  Which means I have NOT been working on all the wonderful projects I’ve been wanting to post.  In fact, the only good thing is that I have LOTS of time to come up with more projects that I can’t wait to tackle in the future.

But I did want to share something and keep this blog alive.  It’s heartbeat was getting pretty sluggish. . . .    :o)

So, since I stare at them most of the day anyway, I decided to show you some cutter quilt pillows I made a while back that sit on the window seat in my bedroom.  You can find cutter quilts in a number of places from garage sales to a relative's attic.  I ended up going to EBAY and finding some for a good price.  A cutter quilt is nothing more than an old tattered quilt that, as a whole, is too battered to put on a bed.  But often there are smaller areas of the quilt that are not damaged and can be used for smaller projects (e.g. teddy bears, pillows, etc).


Using a sewing machine and basics for making a pillow, I sewed up a few different pillow shapes and stuffed them with polyfil.  This particular “feedsack” material reminds me a lot of the quilts my grandmother made.  It gives the room a comfy vintage look that I love.







Rebecca

Throw Open the Windows... Let's get started!!!

Welcome to Throw Open the Windows!!!

Everything in my life right now tells me that now is really NOT the time to start my journey into blogland.  After all, I’m due to deliver our third child in just a few weeks and many of you know how time consuming this period is.  But the truth is I want to do this for me.  I have such a long to-do list of projects (some of which have been inspired by other blogs I’ve read) and I need a place to organize my ideas and projects.  I also figure that if I start a blog, you guys will help keep me accountable for finishing the projects I start.  Am I the only one who’s bad about that?!?!

So even if it’s a slow start… it’s my start.  I hope you will join me on my journey as I share with you some of the DIY projects, crafts, and family fun that go on in our home. And I hope you can take away with you an inspiration and a sense of peace when you leave.

Rebecca