Ice Blue And Red Christmas Decor and Mantel

Christmas is winding to a close here on Clover Ridge so I just want to share a few more pics. I realize that there are several rooms I decorated that I didn't take a single photo of this season. Breaking my foot really put a crick in my plans for the blog this holiday season. But there is always hope for next year. I so wanted to show you the bathrooms which looked adorable this  year and I even made a tree of clothespins for the laundry room! It never got photographed. I did take a few pics of the Master Bedroom I want to share, as my family is already beginning to dismantle the trees and decorations. The kids go back to school soon and I need their help to get all the boxes and crates up and down the steps, so it is coming down early this year. That is life, sometimes it throws you curve balls you aren't expecting.
 So without further fuss here are a few more images of what really was a beautiful tree this year!

Home for the Holidays:Family Room

Hello all my fellow Christmas elves. I am super excited now that the decorating is done to get busy baking cookies and making cocoa and driving around randomly at night to look at Christmas lights!  I have Christmas cards to address and send out and a few more gifts to finish up and ship but I am making progress! It is a joyful chaos!

I thought I would share a few pics of the family room. Those of you who follow the blog on fb (if you don't you should!) had the chance to help me decide what to paint on our burlap banner on the fireplace and got the sneaky peek! I am really embracing the gold this year.

And the deer are a recurring them this year. After I scored those brass deer head statues back in the summer at the World's Longest Yard Sale I knew they would be making an appearance on the Christmas mantle. Can you see them tucked in among the pinecones and garland? And those pinecones!? We don't have them like that here in the upper south, the craft store sells them for 4$ a piece! I worked out a trade for some apple jelly I made o a dear friend in South Carlina who was kind enough to ship me a box from her yard full of those precious things! I am a lucky girl, what can I say. Amazing what you can buy with some good jelly! Long live the barter system!
Well, I got off on a tear there didn't I? Back to the decorating!
 I spotted some paper mache deer antlers on Michaels website and ran out to get some ASAP. I spray painted them, of course!!! And they are the perfect accent for the coffee table centerpiece. A match to the deer head I put above the fireplace.

I didn't forget to put a candle in the bird tealight holder. When I work out I put my rings in it so I don't lose them or forget to put them back on. Though I have discovered the employees at the hardware store are super helpful when I forget to put them on, hee hee. Oh the greenery for my centerpiece is two small wreaths just bent to an oblong around a much smaller table centerpiece we have had for years.

I switched out the art work on my gallery wall for pictures from Christmases past and the glitter deer head silhouette I made last year. I'll try to snap a pic of it tomorrow in the day light and add it.
 How are you doing with your decorating this year? Do you prefer a "family tree" with all sentimental ornaments or the decorator gorgeous trees? Feel free to post your pics in the comments below!

Home for the Holidays! Rustic glam!!

Our living room is all decked out for the season and it looks so beautiful! The combination of white lights, burlap, champagne ribbon and mercury glass is sparkling and warm. I probably say this every year but this year it is my favorite tree.
I am hoping to do a video tour of the whole house for you but as a little sneak peak I took a few photos to share with you.

 Here you can see the whole tree and a hint of the feather topper There is just something about a room that is dark except for the warm glow of Christmas lights.

Every year I make some new ornaments. This year I made some little photo transfer canvas ornaments that are honestly some of the most personal, precious ornaments I have ever made. I am so in love with these things I can not even tell you how much. I made them with photos chronicling our lives as a family from our wedding day all the way to my oldest son's graduation this past June.  I love this tree!!!

I will be sharing more from this room and the whole house so drop back by for some spiked cocoa and a Christmas cookie!!There will probably be Christmas carols playing and the house will smell like oranges and cinnamon!

Master Bedroom Must Have:Coffee Bar

Recently I had a dear friend request a post on my coffee bar. It's in my Master Bedroom and yes I am that addicted to coffee and yes I am that lazy that some mornings I just want to stay in my bed, in my room and drink my hot, fresh coffee in a quiet, serene space without the benefit of loud, farting boy children. I do let Husband Darling stay sometimes though, if he is good.
During the recent bedroom redo the coffee bar got a little refreshening too. Paint, a few new accessories and restocked! And I made it a sign, because a coffee bar deserves a sign!

I am all set with a coffee pot, microwave and mini fridge. I have coffee, various teas, apple cider instant packs. I keep a little supply of mini candy bars in the milk glass candy dish for Husband.  I have cookies for bedtime snacks and pretzels in a glass snack jar. Wine glasses for evening sipping of course!
I will be adding a mini cocoa bar to it for the holidays! 

It's a Glorius Vanity!

Hey y'all, I am trying to find time to tell you all about our Master Bath redo in between decorating trees and crafting ornaments for Christmas! It's a hectic time of year here in our house on Clover Ridge!

I snapped a few pics before I started switching out the newly placed decor for Christmas decorations!As you can see this room got 3 coats of the same paint I used in the Master Bedroom.

This is my vanity area in our main bathroom space, The vanity table, a 12th birthday gift from my Grandma  got a fresh coat of paint and a metallic painted top. The chair got fresh white paint( I spray painted it for speed!) and a newly covered and extra padding added seat. I love this fabric! This chair has been with us about 10 years and I have recovered it no less then 3 other times, I love the lines of it and it is such a great chair I am constantly moving it to a new spot but I really like it here for my vanity, that is when it isn't covered in clothes waiting to be hung back up, let's keep it real folks!

I really love to use my milk glass instead of it just sitting on top of the cabinet over my refrigerator. I use it for all kinds of stuff. Here I am using teacup saucers in this display rack to hold my fav earrings and ankle bracelets and girl maintenance tools, y'know the eyelash curler and tweezers and such. And the little flower pot holds my makeup brushes and emery board. So simple and pretty and milk glass always reminds me of my Grandma, she had lots of it and used it for plant pots in her spare room. Happy memories.

This light is just a hanging light kit from Ikea and a clearance drum shade. The sparklies are actually Christmas ornaments from Hobby Lobby!

 And I hung some new sheers, I am currently obsessed with white voile sheers. In the last year I have hung them in the family room, living room, dining room, master bed and bathrooms! They are only a few bucks per panel, they give us privacy in our subdivision and diffuse the light actually making it seem brighter in my bathroom but toning own the hot glare of sun in the dining room, such clever things, sheers!! 

I needed somewhere to display my accessories or to be honest I forget to ever wear anything but my wedding rings and some plain silver hoop earrings! When I see them I remember to wear them! So I hung them up! I had this incredible antique wood box that has been everything from a trey to hold liqour bottles in the dining room to a Christmas table centerpiece, in a couple different rooms over a couple different years. I mounted it on the wall and pushed in metal thumb tacks to hold my necklaces and put a little milk glass compote on top to hold bracelets! Insanely clever, right?? I love the way it looks and it is handy!

And one last little project, I picked up this wooden tool holder at the Goodwill for 4$. Ugly raw wood and filthy dirty but we know how to fix that! 

So here is the before and here is the after!

I just slapped it with some grey paint and rubbed it down with some ebony wood stain! It holds all my lotions and potions so they don't clutter up the vanity top :)
 Come on back to find out what else was revamped, refreshed and covered in spray paint in our spa bath! 

Master Bedroom Grand Reveal!

Hello my lovelies,
today is the day you have all been waiting for!!!! The Grand Reveal in my best announcer voice) tododododooooooooo (horn intro)

The biggest component to redecorating a room, in my opinion, is the tons of little projects that add up to the whole project. I repainted and upholstered our bed, painted all the tables, upholstered the panels behind the bed, crafted the mirror, reprinted photos in black and white and a ton of other small things. Each one takes time and effort and that is why this little redecorating project took 2 weeks instead of two days. The walls and baseboards got painted first and then I started tons of smaller tasks. I will detail several of these later on but I wanted to share the final result!

By the time I took these pictures it was already getting dark, dang daylight savings time!  So it messes with the lighting a bit. I would love to find a cream corduroy slip cover for our enormous love seat but for now I improvised a cover out of fabric I had, and yes those are the curtains I had up before the room was painted. 

 

It never ceases to amaze me  what a gallon or two of paint can do in a space. My kids keep coming in and laying down on my bed, Zach says it feels so light and airy in there now! I love that, it was absolutely the feeling I was going for. I will share a couple more pictures of the space today and later we will get down to the details! Honestly there was not a surface in this room that didn't get smacked with paint or newness of some kind! And the best part is I really spent very little. All the main pieces we already owned they just got pulled from other rooms or re-invented in some way.

Love this blueprint blow-up of a recent snapshot my son took of Husband Darling and I. 

The fireplace and it's faux brick came out just the way I envisioned them! I always love when a project actually works!! This was a big project, that is about 8 coats of white paint! And everything on the mantel is a redo or new in some way! The big platter got spray painted, the vase is an upside down light fixture globe I spray painted, the art is all my own projects. But truly the brick is my favorite part!

ok, that's enough for now but I will be back to share more details and the master bath space with you too!

Cat In The Hat Problems or Aviation Themed Bathroom

The chaos continues. 

I just keep cleaning and finding new problems! By the way, boys are gross! Just gonna state it, put it out there, let it sink in, gather support, etc.....  And just one more time in case you didn't hear me.....boys are gross. Boys bathrooms are absolutely foul. My boys, in theory, are old enough to clean their bathroom and in theory it is their chore. Now in reality every now and then when I yell at them about their grossness they go in and wipe the toothpaste out of the sink and put the toilet seat down. Their tub frequently looks like The Cat In The Hat just left without calling Thing 1 and Thing 2 let alone A, B, C, or D! I mean some serious ring! And occasionally I am foolish enough to actually glance in there as I walk past and inevitably I am forced to halt all else in my day to scrub their grossness down the drain. It's either that or call in HazMat.

It was just one of these situations that lead to the next project. As I scrubbed the walls in the kids bath I noticed that they are a little soft. I know it is because the boys forget to turn on the vent fan when they shower. And I shudder to think of the amounts of other liquids the walls may be soaking up. So I scrubbed them down with bleach water because seriously what else kills this issue??!! Then my brain was struck by lightning (a little Hook movie reference, my oldest loved that movie!) So not to spoil the surprise  here we go...

Maps! I glued maps all over the place! I layered them, I used my favorite ones in the best spots. Aviation maps, we had a bunch of them laying around not being used so they became free wallpaper!

I used some flight sim posters as decorations and added a joy stick and of course a globe. A new fresh un peed on shower curtain and fresh paint on the med cab, baseboards and vanity and a serious scrub down of every surface and it is fresh and clean in there now!

I don't have any idea why but for some reason my kids are excellent at ripping toilet paper holders out of walls so I gave up, surrendered, laid down the anchors and drill. I took this little wooden wine crate an gave it a quick coat of paint and filled it with the necessary rolls. Now the toilet paper is at hand and not falling off the wall. And we gifted them a new Ikea super squishy bath mat. Please admire it while it's still blue. Yellow and blue make green. Just sayin.
Here is a quick shot of the easiest art ever!

Thank you Pinterest and your beloved supply of free printables!! I already had the frame and the prints cost me 10 cents a piece at Walgreens. 

There's another one of those free printables! You're never fully dressed without a smile! The green pot is a flower pot, clean of course, holding their toothbrushes and the soap dispenser is the one they already had with a couple quick coats of, what else,  spray paint. The knobs I changed out in a previous redo.  Oh and I almost forgot, one last thing! Actually one of my favorite parts, house numbers! I picked these up at our little neighborhood drug store that is more like the ol fashioned general store. Everything from getting your prescription to picking up some plumbing parts, makeup and a frozen dinner and maybe, just maybe a Christmas tree. These were like 79 cents or some crazy number. I mounted them over each kids towel hook and they make me happy! And that's all folks for this room, anyway! More to come!!

Wash Dry Rinse Repeat

So much has been getting smacked with a coat of paint around here that the husband says he is afraid to sit still, I might paint him. After I painted our teen's room I noticed that the cream paint in the hall looked dingy after 6 years and 3 kids so I decided to give it a lick of paint. It was a success but then I was standing by the front door and looked up and noticed that the yellow paint in our laundry room practically glowed against the soft grey and really drew the eye up the stairs. Not exactly what you want to draw attention from your guests! You could see the detergent bottles and stacked toilet paper and cleaning supplies clearly from our entry. Ummmmmm NO!

see? glowing!

But with so much else going on I was going to leave it alone for now. But then I was in there doing laundry and noticed puffs of lint from behind the dryer when I started it. Uh-oh!! The most common cause of house fires is dryers and dryer lint! That stuff goes up in a big blaze F-A-S-T!  We actually collect it in toilet paper tubes to use to start the fire pit in the summer time! So I knew I had to investigate. I climbed up o the washing machine (elf size girl problems!) and looked behind the dryer and sure enough the venting had come unattached. Which meant all the dust and lint was going right into the air my children breathe!!!  My oldest had terrible asthma when he was little so I know just how dangerous this is and I had to fix it. Our laundry room is so teeny tiny that you can't pull the dryer all the way out so I pushed it forward about a foot and wiggled behind it. I tried to just reconnect it but it wasn't working and evidently it had been off thru several loads because there was enough lint back there to make a baby wolf! Or possibly a littler of babies. It had to be cleaned and fixed. And so it began! I had to make a run to the hardware store for a new dryer vent whatjamijiggy and since I had to pull stuff out to clean and fix anyway I might as well paint too.
  I needed to blend it in better since in this house we are practically always doing laundry! Best way to camouflage something is to paint it the same color as everything else so it doesn't stop the eye. So I painted it the hall color. Then I went to Pinterest to look for ideas on how to make it look prettier in my utilitarian, tiny little space. Honestly, what did we do before Pinterest???

Before

After!

 Such a big change! I added a little skirt on a tension rod and I made that adorable clothespin starburst mirror!! Hot glue, old charger, tons of clothespins, gold spray paint and a craft mirror, easy peasy, just how I like it. And it looks adorable!

A few more pictures of storage and pretties. I am going to hag a couple towel racks on the inside wall with some S hooks to hang dry t shirts and dedicates. It's such a small space I had to be creative with the space plan.
It's pretty amazing what a couple canvas bins and wire baskets can do for tidy, organized storage! I put the fabric on the ugly wire racking above just to hide it a bit. On the lower wire shelf I just put down a raffia place mat. I am thinking in time we will upgrade to actual cabinets and then I will trade out the wire shelf too but for now, we had it so we will use it. I added a mini sewing kit in a mason jar and popped some of my boys old baby socks I came across in the other, just because they make me smile. The whole thing took about 4 hours worth of work spread over 2 days. Not horrible! ow it functions, blends and makes me smile.

Lego Man!

Hey everyone,
you know our house has been a vision in chaos lately as I try to do a million and one projects in preparation for the Christmas season. With so much going on our sweet baby felt a little left out with his brother getting a room redo and Mama getting a room redo AND he was incredibly inspired by a room he saw at the Home Fest when we went in the late summer. I agreed to freshen some art and rearrange some things to make it feel new in his small room. I have one small project left to do but here's what we came up with so far.

 I hung some new IKEA  shelves and we removed a small bookcase that took up precious floor space. I made him a bulletin board out of the frame we had and some cork on a roll for his notes and drawings. And my fav......

Lego Man! This space had a fold out love seat for sleep overs but he decided he would rather have  "so much space for activities! " (in my best John C Reilly voice)
I took the ladder from their bunk beds before we split them up and separated the boys to their own rooms and added it for storage. He wants a bean bag in this space too.
He loves his new art work. It's a photograph of his favorite lego minifigure I took and had blown up at Kinkos into a "blueprint size" for 4.50$ Yesterday I glued it on a canvas he already had in  this spot, that I repainted white. He loves it, which makes me ecstatic!

I painted this little night stand in his color choice and made him a little eye chart art over the bed. Simple stuff  but he's got simple tastes :) Easy Peasy accessories for a quick room refresh just right for him. It doesn't have to be hard or expensive  to be age appropriate, fun and make it easier for them to tidy up their own spaces!  My favorite part besides the huge smile he gave me when he saw his Lego Man art is the Lego Man art!

Teen Boy Room Re-do!

This is the sample board that inspired the direction for my son's big boy bedroom redecorating project. He is soon to be 13 and well, let's face it, he had outgrown the boats and ponies I put in that room when we bought our house 6 years ago. He asked for a grown up look but wasn't sure what that meant but lucky him, I was able to help. So I came up with an adorable travel theme, he shot down all my ideas. Dang it! And he is to big to boss around, well as much anyway. So I stopped thinking and listened, I poured over pinterest and did searches and looked at catalogs and came up with Plan B. Upon running this option by the Teen Machine it was approved. I got started and he started complaining, "why is it taking so long?' "when will you be done?" "Can I have my room back now?" Just as my patience was running dangerously thin I finished the painting an the stripes and got the furniture put back but now the fun begins! New space plan, new accessories, etc. I wanted to use a lot of his special things and interests as a guide, I wanted him to have ownership of the space. So here's the finished product, it took me weeks of effort but in the end he was happy and that is all that counts!

Wait, there's more!

Aaaaaand more!

I scored this adorable ladder shelf at an online yard sale. It was a scratched up ugly cherry but with paint it has new life. The desk was a Target clearance find and I just made a little cushion for his chair, hung some shelves and I will tell you more about his bulletin board in a sec.

so cute, right!?
Also, geez kids have a ton of crap!

this is his Bright Idea Lightbulb, it hangs over his head when he sits at his desk to encourage greatness.

Ok here is his bulletin board. I found it in someone's trash. They had taken apart a home made rabbit hutch. I sanded it, scrubbed it, twice and painted it. With some binder clips he has a place to put "stuff" and it didn't cost me anything, except time!

I made this banner for him from leftover paint drop cloth scraps after the fall pillows were made.

I found this B&W photograph at the Country Living Fair and scored these big frames at the Goodwill when I went to drop off a bunch of toys from his room. Also a lovely lady who was unloading at the same time gifted me this old adding machine which I thought was cool for my little math whiz.
So that's it! He is all grown up now, well maybe not quite but his room is no longer baby-ish and he is happy!