Dresser

after

before... eeek!

A bit of progress has been made on the poor 80's purple sponged dresser. Since Mr. H. has time off due to our weather, he, out of boredom, took poor dresser out to the garage and at the end of the day, this is what he carried back in for me.  He also graciously removed and dumped the gold knobs.

I've actually grown quite fond of her current look and have debated keeping her just like this. You probably think I'm crazy, but I love the character of it.

But, I've decided to paint her blue. I have a soft spot for blue painted furniture.

http://www.junkrestore.com/

This is one of my favorite blogs. Her pictures and ideas are dreamy! I LOVE the distressed dresser in her header. It's the one that inspired me to keep ugly 80's dresser as she currently is and paint one of the drawers black..... but I think too much paint has been removed to get the real effect of this one :( 

SO QUESTION: What do you think of painting the body of the dresser blue and the drawer fronts white... or vice versa? Or should I stay with one color?

Anyway, you all have a fabulously blessed day.....

I'm in the mood to paint...

Here she is.....

Isn't she a beauty!

Look at that beautiful purple... is it purple? I'm not sure what to call that color! Sponged over green/blue, wow.... hmmm an 80's art student project??? How did it survive all those years like that.

And the added touch of shiny gold knobs... (what a treat!)

I do like it's size and the little detail it has. I don't think I'm up to trying to remove all the special paint she's now wearing... I'll probably just give it a light sand and find a new color for her. Maybe white, antique cream/brown or turquoise... what do you think....

I am lovin this color..... and this piece, of course....

Snow and not much else!

My front yard

So, I haven't made any progress in Emma's room. No further painting on her walls or furniture. As a fellow blogger said "Christmas is just around the corner... painting it in January is perfectly acceptable!!!!". You were right, Laura!

Christmas madness definately took time over.

Our snowfall returned this year, thank you El Nina! I was very sad last year, that El Nino warmed the temps and gave us nothing but rain. When you live in a snow climate, you expect snow... I felt very cheated last year.

I love the snow. To me it brings calm and peace. I don't go out and play in it, instead stay inside and finish house projects and enjoy it's beauty from the windows! This year the snow is just beautiful.

We enjoyed the company of Andy's parents. They flew out from California the day after Christmas and stayed through New Year's.

Hubby got a new snowblower for Christmas... It was fired up in the morning and we didn't see their faces again until that evening.... hubby and dad blew the whole street..... twice. (had to break it in, ya know... so they could do the 2 hour oil change) a huh.

My son Josh and his new guitar

New Year's morning... the sun was shining upon this tree and it was so beautiful. I wish my camera would have picked up the true redness it was wearing.

My kiddos with their Umma and Papa

I picked up a cute antique dresser from craigslist yesterday. She has pretty bones but currently wearing sponged purple paint (yes purple sponge paint) sigh.... and to top it off... shiny gold knobs... double sigh. I will post pictures of her later. Not sure what I'm going to do with it yet... white or stripped to natural.

Happy New Year everybody! May you all be richly blessed this new year.

The holidays are over and it's time to get back to painting :)

Lisa Leonard is having another awesome giveaway

On my wishlist is jewerly from Lisa Leonard. I love the simplicity of her designs. She has designed angel wings... I've waited for those since I lost my daughter Grace. She is having a contest and I am crossing fingers that I win! Isn't this just divine!





http://www.lisaleonardonline.com/blog/2010/12/17/my-heart-is-full-giveaway/#comment-146272

My First Christmas Tea

Every year our church has a Mother/Daughter Christmas Tea. Both my daughter and I were thrilled to sign up this year. I did last year, but she ended up with a bad cold. As I was buying my tickets, the Pastor's wife asked if I wanted to host a table. Host a table? What does that mean? She said, you bring in your own china, glasses, centerpiece, etc. and set the table up however and in whatever theme you would like, making sure your decanters stayed full of hot water/chocolate.

My first thought was a vintage Christmas table using my Great Grandmother's antique Imperial Candlewick dishes. I never use them and thought this would be a fun time to. I inherited my Great Grandmother's set when my Grandmother passed away. I've heard many stories about Great Grandmother using them and how she would save for months just to purchase the next piece. The original butter dish to the set was round. In California, back that time ago, the butter did not come round, it was rectangle (a tad smaller), like we have now.

She wrote to Imperial and told them that she was buying the entire set but the butter dish did not work for her... They designed a special rectangle butter dish just for her and gave her the piece for free. The letter from Imperial stayed in my family but was lost some years ago. So for those of you who may also collect the set or have a few pieces... now you know the history of the rectangle butter dish and who inspired that design.

Our daughters rang bells to Christmas songs. They were so cute and so fun to watch.

The church had a backdrop set up to take mother/daughter pictures. I borrowed the seat and snapped a photo of my daughter, Emma. It was a fun day. I enjoyed the special time with my daughter, the fellowship with other mom's and sharing and using my Great Grandmothers dishes.

PS: I'm still painting....

The Verdict.... White

After much thought and furniture blog lurking... I made my final decision to paint Emma's dresser white, yes, just simple clean white. I thought about other colors that would look cool with lavender, like a cool vintage green, turquoise or a pale blue... but after seeing a dresser like hers done by "The Frosted Gardner", I knew her dresser would be perfect in white. I just recently found their blog as they were featured on another blog I follow. Here are a few of their pictures that inspired me.

Love this piece!

Furniture painted by "The Frosted Gardner"

http://frostedgardner.blogspot.com/

If you have not seen "The Frosted Gardner" blog, please do visit their site. They do wonderful work with pieces of furniture and give them amazing new life, they are really nice people too :)  I spent hours browsing their before/after pictures! Such wonderful ideas and gave me so much inspiration.

My friend Laura from Laura's Rose Garden (http://laurasrosegarden.blogspot.com/) also shared a link from her blog where she too had painted a dresser like ours in white and it was simply divine! She has a beautiful site and amazing taste in vintage cottage shabby goodness.  

So, here is the dresser and what I started with today.

I really wasn't very sad about painting the piece. It was a $30 Goodwill find. As you can see the last owners weren't too gentle with the top and it also went through my daughters stage of thinking any surface is her art canvas. So... on went the primer and 2 coats of white paint.

It will need another coat or two tomorrow but I'm really happy with how it's turning out and especially against the new lavender paint.

This is what it looked like outside of Emma's window today... It was a good day to stay inside and paint.

The bedroom makeover: to be continued.......

Lavender

When I was pregnant with my little girl, 7 years ago, I dreamed about how cute and girly I wanted her bedroom to be. Since I had two boys, I was really looking forward to some femininity and pinkness. I remember scanning through a Pottery Barn catalog and falling in love with a paint scheme they did in one of their furniture ads. It was a soft cream color on the top half, pale green on the bottom half and the palest of pinks on a wood moulding to divide the two colors. She's had her room those colors since she was born.

I've been thinking lately about changing her room a bit. I looked at the Better Home and Gardens paint colors and liked this lavender color. I was a little nervous about painting her room all one color as it's always been divided. Here a few pictures of before. Now, please note that her room isn't always this much of a disaster. I remembered to take the "before" picture after I had already shifted all her things to one side. But you get an idea of her colors.

Before

Before

As I started to put the first coat of lavender over the cream and green, my first thought was uh oh.... what did I do? I wasn't too sure of the color and wasn't liking it too much. I know that's common and I told myself (even though I kept thinking that I could easily put the moulding back up and could touch up the area I just painted) just keep going, just finish one wall and see what you think. I still wasn't liking the first coat...

First coat...

But I continued to paint. Once I completed the first wall with 3 coats, the color started to grow on me.

I finished painting her entire room last night. I started first thing in the morning and finished about 8pm. I will post more pictures of the finished walls and thoughts about painting her furniture in my next post :)