out with purple...in with blue!

My awesome {and patient} hubby painted Austin's bedroom over the weekend while I was away with my church for a Women's Retreat. Here's just a sneak peek, but the overall task was definitely not an easy one...which is why it took us a WHOLE YEAR to get it done! Seriously, we finally painted this room exactly a year later from when we moved in. It's a good thing my 3-year old little boy could have cared less that he has been living in a purple room with butterflies for the past year!

{BEFORE}

{AFTER}

The plan for this room is FIRETRUCKS! But, as with Mikayla's room, we'll see how long it takes to decorate! Sad...oh so sad.

the in-between phase

At the end of January we finally decided that we probably shouldn't wait any longer to start the painting project on Mikayla's room. At the time of our decision, we had been in our *new* (sort of) house for 9 months! Nothing like putting off a project you could say. We purchased the paint for Mikayla's room back during the Memorial Day sale (one word: rebates!), but even that was 6 months ago!

Now, please don't hate me because I painted over this beautiful mural ("before" picture), but it's just not my style and so I knew it had to go...eventually. I was fine living with it for however long I did, but I was ready for a change. Although...if you had ever visited our first house, you will soon notice that both Mikayla's room at the old house and her room at the new house is now the same after the paint job was complete.

We're still in the "in-between" phase right now as we have lots of decorating to do to make the room more complete, but at least the hardest part is done! The next step is adding the chair railing...or whatever we decide to do. Let's just hope it won't take another 9 months to get finished!

Mikayla was so excited to help!

{BEFORE}

{IN-BETWEEN}
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{BEFORE}

{IN-BETWEEN}

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{BEFORE}

{IN-BETWEEN}
notice that we actually have the curtain rods up, but uh...no curtains?

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

{BEFORE}

{IN-BETWEEN}

At least we've made some progress!!

just a little piece of where we live

On November 3rd, we will have been in our new home for officially SEVEN MONTHS! I am shocked by how much time has gone by since we moved in over Easter weekend. As we were moving in, I remember a handful of people saying, "It took us at least a year to get settled in, decorate, and make the home feel like ours." I have to be honest, at that moment I thought to myself that no way was that going to be me. Seriously? A year?

Well, as I sit here and eat my humble pie SEVEN MONTHS later...it's definitely the true reality that it may, in fact, be a whole year until we get this house looking like we had originally planned when we first moved in. There are no cosmetic defects or major renovations needing to take place (thank goodness!)...just some painting to be done and room makeovers to be completed. We do feel settled and we do feel like this house is our home, but all of the little {big} projects keep staring at me daily. I guess I have 5 more months to get it done before I really have to eat my words!

So, let's look on the bright side! All three bathrooms are complete ~ you have to start somewhere, right? If you missed the kids' bathroom makeover (first project we completed in our new house), take a peek HERE. I shared about this back in May...it was quite the makeover! At that time, I thought we would be on a roll with our household projects! Somewhere along the way, we lost momentum...or summer happened and having fun seemed more like the thing to do!

Bathroom #1

The other two bathrooms didn't take much to get them looking complete. We stuck with the original paint colors and just decided to fit the decor around that. I was actually "officially" done with these by August, but well...you know. Who really gets inspired to take pictures of a bathroom? But, I figured I should probably show off some part of the house since a handful of you (OK, maybe just my mom) may be wondering.

Bathroom #2

Downstairs, we have a small bathroom for guests to use. Thankfully, the paint was perfect, the countertops are beautiful, and the mirror will just have to do even if it's not quite my style. The only thing I wanted to do in this bathroom was switch out the towel bar and toilet paper holder with something a little more "me". I also found a little cabinet at a garage sale over the summer to fit perfectly in the corner of the already tight bathroom. Without it, it just seems like there's something missing. The pictures you see on the wall are ones that we actually had in our living room at our old house.

And...there's the tour. Do you know how hard it is to take a good picture in such close quarters? This is the best I could come up with, but you get the idea of what it looks like, right?

Bathroom #3

I must remind you before I reveal these next pictures that we moved from a home that had a tiny little "master" bathroom (ha! master...yeah, right). No bath tub, just a shower. So, this is like a dream for us to have our own BIG bathroom where both of us have our own sink and we can take a shower OR a bath if we wanted to. Although, I must admit...I have yet to take a bath. The kids get more use out of it than I do! Maybe it's because I got used to living without one for so long. We decided to keep with the towel colors we already owned, and the walls were neutral enough that we figured we could get away with it! Again, not the most glamorous pictures...because, indeed, it is just a bathroom, but you can pretend to ooh and aah anyway. *wink*

{if you look really closely, you'll see we have a separate little room for the toilet...gotta love having privacy!}

And, there you have it! Hopefully by posting these pictures, it will give me some motivation to get going on some other house projects I'd like to reveal. I just have to remember to tell myself...it will get done. We plan on being here for a very. long. time.

tackling this, that, and the other

I hope you all had a wonderful Memorial Day weekend! Ours was spent doing project after project, but I loved having my hubby home for THREE DAYS! We got so much done, but still enjoyed spending time together. There still seems like so much left to be done, but we're on our way!!

The last couple of weekends, we have tackled...

*Decorating & painting the "formal dining room" (which won't be used as that for us right now.)

BEFORE

AFTER

Sorry, I can only give you a sneak peek at this time.
We're still in MAJOR transition, but it's painted!

*We proceeded to remove wallpaper cards off Austin's room...

...with a steamer...

...which left us with all of this on the wall!

...so then we tried this...

...and Goof Off
...and wallpaper stripper
...and peeling it off with our fingernails
...and using a straight blade

{insert helpful suggestion here!}

*We went to IKEA on Sunday and found the most awesomest (I know it's not a word, but it should be!) storage cabinet thingy for my very own craft room. Best part? It was in the "as is" section stating that it had scratches on it. Ummm...we couldn't find a single scratch anywhere. It was another 35% off its already reduced price because they are discontinuing it. It was meant. to. be.

So, now I can finally do something about all of this ugliness (hey, we "just moved in"...do I get a little sympathy?)...


Sorry, still only a sneak peek. It will take a lot of hard work and sweat to get this room up to my standards. But here is the bottom half of the unit we purchased. It has a hutch on top. It's actually meant to be a kitchen buffet, but it will work just perfectly for what I want it for.

To add to the tackle list from this weekend/past week:

-filled holes and touched up paint through the house (main living area color)
-hung picture frames (just a few!)
-started weeding the backyard, finished weeding the front yard, lawn mowed, grass seed filled in patches
-major rearrangement of furniture upstairs to make room for my new storage cabinet (we literally moved things from craft room to Mikayla's room to our closet to the play room - oh my!)
-finally organized our bedroom closet
-purchased 2 gallons of paint for Mikayla's room (next weekend, maybe?)
-garage sale pricing
-started organizing the garage (WOWZA! is all I can say!)
-laundry...too many loads to count

I bet there's even more I have forgotten, but all this to say...it was a very productive weekend!

Check out what others have tackled at 5 Minutes for Mom.

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And, on a business note...

If you love Stampin' Up! products, check out my most recent blog post at Stuck on Stampin'. They just released their retiring products in preparation for the new catalog coming out on July 1st. There are also a handful of accessories that are 25% or 50% off. Even if you live far, far away you can still order through my website at heidiboos.stampinup.net. Feel free to e-mail me or leave a comment with any questions.

room redo - tackle it tuesday

Surprised to see me?? Don't fall off your chair in shock. I know it's been awhile, but we've been B-U-S-Y with a project here, a project there, a whole bunch of clutter everywhere!!

We've been in our NEW home for 6 1/2 weeks now (hard to believe!). I wish I could say we've painted all the walls that need to be painted, decorated each room, hung up frames, etc. but...nope. The reality is: We have 2 kids, the husband works, I have a side business with Stampin' Up!, on the MOPS leadership team, and if we want to eat, I make meals, too. Oh, on top of cleaning the house and trying to tackle the garage for our garage sale in June. Yep. Reality. So, I'm OK if everything isn't done yet. We have time!!! I'm trying not to stress myself out about all that needs to be done around the hosue. We'll just take it one day at a time and do what we can when we can! I'm trying to have the same mentality with blogging...I'll do it when I can and not feel guilty about it when I don't. (Something I'm trying to work on!)

A couple of weekends ago we decided (OK, I decided...I think my husband had other hopes for the day) to tackle the upstairs bathroom (the one the kids use). I figured if we started on something relatively small we might feel more successful in getting it done quickly. Well...most of it was done quickly and then there was ME putting off a project that I wanted to finish to make the room complete. I finally decided I just can't wait for that one little thing to be done to show off our hard work. So, the {little} project will still be on the back burner coming one day, but for now...the room reveal!!

Background: The previous owners had painted the bathroom an orange color (even the ceiling!) and sponged flowers all over. Now, I'm not going to diss the hard work that someone put in to do this, but it is just not my style. I needed more light and plus, I was keeping with the theme from our former guest bathroom and wasn't about to go out and buy new stuff when I already adored my other bathroom decor.

BEFORE

AFTER

BEFORE
(we'd already taken things off the wall)
AFTER
BEFORE
(snapped a quick picture in the middle of taping up the room)
AFTER
(See that empty frame? That's the project I was putting off. I plan to make a collage of some bath tub pictures from when the kids were little and include a poem.)
A little accent I added was using an Uppercase Living vinyl to put on the mirror. It says, "{Begin each day with a smile}" I love how it adds a fun little touch to an already "smiley" room!

Does the paint color look familiar? It is the same color that used to be in our play room at our old house. We opted to paint the ceiling this color as well vs. white (since they had it orange) and were a little shocked at how bright it was, so we decided to paint a darker 6-inch green stripe along the top to break up the ceiling from the wall. I am so pleased with how that turned out!

Those little wall "spot" decals might also look familiar. I was able to salvage them from the decor in our old play room and used them to make a "wave" around the room. I couldn't believe how well they matched the shower curtain...which by the way was a new addition! The shower hooks were brought over from the old house, along with all the froggy accents, towels, polka dot accessories, candle, and faux flowers.

Nothing like tackling a project and feeling proud of the accomplishment! If you have a project you've been putting off (big or small), tackle it and show off your hard work by linking up with Tackle it Tuesday at 5 Minutes for Mom.

Next room redo I hope to tackle? My son's room! It's currently purple with butterflies and flowers...but I'm hoping to transform it into firetrucks!! This one is going to be a GIANT-SIZED tackle, so we'll see when this one gets finished!

spot on!

Our play room is always in some sort of transition and I'm not sure if it will ever be exactly the way I had envisioned, but...

it's getting closer!

So, what started as this (a blank wall):

Turned into this:

By adding some of these (wall vinyls):

All for only $8.99!!

(FYI: I've already added an extra dot to the right after seeing this picture
and realizing it looked uneven...and I need to move the frame up a little
higher after moving some furniture around. See? Always a transition!!)

I still have some of these wall vinyls left,
so who knows where else I might get a little spot crazy in the room!

A cheap way to spruce up a wall definitely works for me!

tackle it tuesday & craft challenge time!!

On Sunday I had the BRILLIANT idea (well, maybe not so much to my husband) to re-arrange our bonus room. I was tired of having my creative corner always looking like this and this. I came to the conclusion that I simply just needed more space! Since starting Stampin' Up! I've accumulated a few (a lot) more things that are necessary to continue my growing business, and I needed a place to put everything and feel like I could still function and keep things organized.

organized space = organized thoughts = getting something done!

While browsing a little at Michaels Crafts the other day, I ran across a 6-cube shelf that I just had to have. You know those moments, right? When something is on sale and you have really been needing something just like it.

And, so I bought it.

And that's how this whole re-arranging thing began. I needed to make the shelf fit and of course this meant taking a few things down of the wall, patching some holes, and repainting...all so I could move my desk over just a tad. Oh, and I can't forget that also meant putting together a few pieces of small furniture. {Hooray for husbands who love to help their wives!}

I wish I had a few more before pictures, but the actual "before" of this project was all a mess and I got deep in the trenches before I thought to take a picture of it all. But I got a snapshot of the "during", so does that count? Proof that it was chaos for awhile!

~DURING~

~BEFORE~
my own little corner in our bonus room

~AFTER~
time to spread out!

~BEFORE~
right next to my desk was the kids' play kitchen

~AFTER~
the play kitchen is now on the opposite side of the wall
(I'll show you the other side of the room redo another day)

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How I expanded
my space...

had the hubby put together a six cube shelving unit
and added 4 fabric bin drawers, 2 I bought and 2 I already had
(you know the one I had to have)

had the hubby put together a 3-drawer storage organizer
(*brand new* at a garage sale for $5.00)

swiped a bookshelf from Mikayla's closet that was not being put to
good use so I could have room for more stuff!

Actually, now that I look at these pictures...
I think I have room for more stuff!

Kidding!!
{kind of}

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And now onto what some of you have all been waiting for...
this month's MONTHLY CRAFT CHALLENGE assignment!
Many of you shared your ideas last week and I'm so glad you did. I have made a long list and I'm ready for many, many, many monthly craft challenges to come!

To get us all ready for the upcoming holidays, for the month of September, our challenge is to make something that is Halloween or Fall themed.

And to get the word out, snag this {holiday edition} craft challenge button below (see the html text on the left side bar) and post it on your blog to spread the word. Be sure to link back here so everyone can learn what this challenge is all about! Leave a comment and let me know you have done this on your blog and you will be entered into a giveaway just for shouting it out on your blog! I'll post a winner on Friday morning, so be sure to do this before you head to bed on Thursday.

You'll have one month to create and we'll all "meet up to link up" on Thursday, October 1st. So, what are you waiting for!? Get crafting!!
*wink wink*

For more details of these monthly craft challenges,
go check it out HERE.