Painted Glass Jars

I mentioned in my last post that our guest bathroom redo is complete except for finding yellow decorations for the shelves. Well, finding yellow stuff is proving harder than I expected! I'm not dead-set on everything being yellow, but I want some bright "pops" of color in all that white. I figured I could find a yellow hand soap/toothbrush holder set and some yellow containers easily, but so far I keep striking out. 

Yesterday we went to Garden Ridge to pick up some glass containers to hold cotton balls and Q-tips. We found some pretty (and cheap - gotta love Garden Ridge!) glass jars with a crackled finish. I filled one with cotton balls and it was pretty enough, but certainly didn't "pop" against the shelves. 

I asked myself what my favorite bloggers would do... and they would paint it! First I tried painting it with a brush and it was a streaky mess, so I went to the Internet. I found several blogs and websites that showed how to paint the inside of glass mason jars and decided to use the same method. 

Squirt a bunch of paint into the jar. This was my first try, and it wasn't nearly enough. 

I ended up squirting almost an entire bottle of paint into the jar. It was an $0.89 bottle of craft paint, so no big deal. After squirting a lot of paint, roll/shake/swirl the jar to cover all the surfaces. This sounds easy, but it takes a while to get it to move around enough to coat every surface. 

Once the whole thing is covered in paint, turn it upside down over newspapers or cardboard that will soak up the dripping paint. It drips for a long time!

Finally, when it finishes dripping, I found that it helped to turn it right-side-up to dry. Here is a picture of the finished product!

And a picture of the two together on the shelves to show how much more "pop" the painted one provides. I've painted the larger jar too and am just waiting on it to dry!

Guest Bathroom Renovation - Pictures!!!

You know how one thing leads to another? Well, pulling up the carpet in the nursery led to pulling up the tile in the bathroom, which led to an overhaul of the entire Jack-and-Jill bathroom! This bathroom is between the nursery and the guest bedroom, so it needs to be functional for both a baby and for any overnight guests. We didn't HATE the decor in the bathroom when we moved in, but it certainly wouldn't have been what we'd have chosen. Between the orange wallpaper, dark vanity and poor lighting, the room seemed dreary and dirty. It's been a while since we've pulled down wallpaper and painted, so I guess we forgot how much we don't like doing it. Plus the vanity drawers had seen better days and needed replacing. Even though we knew it would be a big job, I was happy to finally brighten it up a little!

This is the view from the Guest Bedroom through to the nursery (also a work in process in this picture). Don't you know we hated to see this seashell sink go...

Once we removed the orange polka dot wallpaper we found several other layers underneath. Three are shown in this picture, but there was at least one more that we didn't capture in a photo!

Here I am busting up the tile with a sledgehammer in my cute pink hard hat and ear protection! (If I'm being honest, this is me posing to pretend like I was busting up the tile in my cute hard hat. Justin deserves all the tile-busting credit.)

We finished pulling out the sink and making the bathroom completely unusable around the end of January. Very little happened for several months until my parents came to visit and offered to help! We just about spent an entire weekend pulling down wallpaper! Then they left, and the bathroom sat untouched again. They came back and Dad did some plumbing work and installed the vanity and sink, so that was a big step in the right direction. Finally, over the Fourth of July, Mom and Dad returned and we finished the job! We are both extremely grateful for their help, because there is no telling when or if we would have finished on our own!

Dad and Justin built custom shelves for either side of the vanity (while Mom and I did the equally important work of shopping for things to put on them). They installed beadboard on the ceiling and hung a new light fixture that looks much better than the square recessed light that didn't actually put off any light anyway.

 We still have a lot of decorating to do (the fun part!) but here is the finished bathroom!

I absolutely LOVE the way it turned out! If there is any question about whether it is an improvement, here is a "before" and "after" shot side by side. It's definitely better now! 

Thank you SO much to Justin for tolerating and implementing my big ideas and to Mom and Dad for coming to Memphis several times to bail us out since we may have bitten off more than we could chew this time!

Vacation "Out West" circa 1993

For a while now, I've been meaning to scan old pictures to have a back up and have them more accessible with the rest of my digital pictures. Tonight I finally started this project! I scanned pictures of a trip that I took the summer after 5th grade with Grandma, Grandpa and Uncle David. Here are some of the highlights!

We started the trip by driving to St. Louis. You'd expect that I would have taken pictures of the arch and other famous St. Louis landmarks, but instead I documented a picture of one of the "best playgrounds I'd ever seen" (according to my writing on the back of the picture). I think it may have been at a truck stop.

From there we made our way to South Dakota. I remember being amazed at the Corn Palace, where they had murals made of corn. Random!

Here are some great pictures from the Badlands:

Uncle David, me, Grandpa

Uncle David, Grandma and Grandpa

Here is Devil's Tower, also in South Dakota.

 And I can still remember watching the prarie dogs play! So cute!

We visited Mt. Rushmore -

And Yellowstone National Park -

A highlight of the trip was playing in the snow in the middle of the summer when it wasn't even cold outside! I think these pictures are all from Glacier National Park.

This was my first time leaving the United States, since we decided to drive into Canada for a bit. I'm probably remembering this story wrong, but as I remember it, the Customs officials had no problem letting my grandparents carry me out of the country without any documentation. However, when it came time to drive back into the US, they wouldn't let us through because they didn't have documentation from my parents saying it was ok! So I tell the story that we were stuck in Canada, but I'm sure it wasn't for very long at all!

From Montana we drove down to Utah and saw the sights around Salt Lake City...

The great Salt Lake -

 The Mormon Cathedral (if that is what it's called, I don't know!)

 And a cool mine.

We visited Dinosaur National Monument where we saw plenty of dinosaur fosssils and good photo ops!

At some point in the trip, we came across the Gardner River and of courses stopped to take pictures.

Finally, here are some miscellaneous pictures that I'm not sure exactly where they were taken, but they are blog-worthy anyway!

Nursery Decorations!

Justin and I started working on our nursery as soon as we found out that we are having a GIRL, but I haven't posted pictures because it's been such a work in progress. Those that know us know we have quite a few projects going at any point in time... and we start them at a faster rate than we finish them!

I decided as soon as I started looking at nursery decor that I wanted one of those big tree wall decals, so that was my first purchase. I also wanted white furniture, partly because I like it, and partly because then we could buy anything and paint it to match! My good friend Lisa offered me her old crib, which happened to be white, so we had a starting point.

But I guess I'm getting ahead of myself...

We had been planning to redo the floors in our three downstairs bedrooms for a while, but hadn't gotten around to it. They were all shag carpet, and although we had it professionally cleaned, it was questionable how clean that carpet could actually get. I like hard floors where if they are dirty, you can tell it, but at least you know they are really clean. They look better in this picture than they did in real life:

It was quite a project, but we ripped up the carpet in our bedroom, the guest bedroom and the office (that would become the nursery) and replaced it with hardwood, which I LOVE! My only complaint is the pitter-patter of little dog toenails ALL NIGHT LONG! (We still need to put a transition piece between the hallway and the bedrooms, but that will come)

We're also doing work in the Jack and Jill bathroom, but that's a post for another day (when that project is finished!)

Once the floors were installed, we decided on a paint color, painted the room, decided we (ok, I) didn't like the color, picked another one and painted again. I'm really happy with the color now, though, so I'm glad that we took the time to redo it.

Justin and I worked together to hang the pink and white cherry blossom tree decal, which was cumbersome to hang but not difficult. We bought "Penelope" bedding from Pottery Barn outlet, since the pink birds go so well with the tree. Here is a picture of that side of the room -

The blue tape is the (approximate) location of bookshelves that Justin is making, so that will be in a later post!

The next project was a dresser that we will use as a changing table. I wanted something more functional than a plain changing table, with drawers, and something big enough to fill up the wall. We found a used dresser for $50 that was in very good shape. It just needed a couple pieces of molding replaced and a coat (or 3) of white paint!

Mom and Dad were in town this past weekend and helped with this project and others, which we REALLY enjoyed and appreciated. Mom and I made it our mission to pick out curtains and we bought and returned quite a few sets on Saturday and Sunday but eventually settled on these soft pink, pleated ones. Dad also helped us to hang the chandelier properly. This is the light fixture that was in the room when we bought the house, but we replaced it because it's really not right for an office. Luckily, Justin stuck it in the attic so we hung it back up!

We still want to hang artwork about the changing table and I'd love to find a cute rug, but at least the big stuff is done!