My Home Office - The Built-in Desk~

Ever since we moved into the house 2 1/2 years ago, I have wanted to turn this strange closet in our library into a useful built-in desk. Well, as you may remember, our house is on the market, and since not everyone wants a built-in desk, we had to modify our original plan just a bit.


As I showed you in the slideshow yesterday, after removing the doors to the closet, we finished the interior and the Hubby built a shelf. We had planned on building the desk portion as well, but opted instead to use a fabulous $10 yard sale table that we found a couple of years back which just happens to fit perfectly in the closet. (Yes, that was just good fortune!)

I skirted the bottom to hide all my computer paraphenalia, because as you can see in the pictures, my computer is ancient-of-days and is about to wheeze it's last wheeze. But it still does the job, so I can't complain (or replace it just yet.)

To make the space my own, I added my pretty pinboards, a few of our vintage cameras (turns out HUGE computer monitors make good display shelves), some cute white baskets with little chalkboard tags, and bits of this and that to make me smile. If we were planning on staying in the house, I would add a permanent light fixture of some sort, but for now, the light clip does the trick - even if the cord is a little unsightly.

Some of you may know that I work from home as a part-time editorial assistant , so between that and blogging, I spend a lot of hours sitting in front of the computer. Now it makes me smile everytime I sit down. And the moral of this story is...persistence definitely pays off!

Just love my vintage printing block "H" and my cute damask stamp (found in the Dollar Spot at Tar-jay!)

I love the texture of the folded book, the twine and the starfish on linen. mmmmmmm.

I love this vignette...a photo of me and the l'il sis, a rubberband ball that the kiddos helped me make out of rubberbands my mother sent home with us this summer, and the hubby's birthday pixie.

A few of our vintage cameras.

And the winner of the Single Stone Studios $40 gift certificate is Mary Ellen (Megardengal) from Mary's Meanderings. Congratulations! Drop me an email and we'll get you set up!

Have a great day~

Frugal Friday - the built-in desk~

I've had a project on our to-do list since we moved into the house 2 1/2 years ago. And today it finally got finished. I took some pictures, but the lighting was not very good...so I'm going to take better ones tomorrow. In the meantime, here's a little slideshow of the process...starring... The Hubby (yes, he did all the hard work except the paint job...thanks sweetie!!) I'm posting a couple of little teaser photos of the finished product as well...hopefully they'll make you want to come back.

Edited to add: I've had a couple of comments about the slide show...it does end at slide 10...for anyone who wants to know. (leaves you hangin' huh?) ;-)

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Why, you may ask, is this project featured on Frugal Friday? The only things we purchased to finish this were 2 sheets of drywall. Grand total...less than $20.

Teaser photos ...

Come back tomorrow to see the finished project and find out the winner of the Single Stone Studios giveaway!

Have a great Friday night!

A Thankful Tree and A Project Teaser~

Thanksgiving is one of my very favorite holidays. And I feel like it is often overlooked. I want my children to know the meaning behind the turkey and mashed potatoes. I want them to celebrate with a grateful heart. So today I wanted to share with you all a fun tradition that puts the focus on gratitude....the Thankful Tree.

Our family takes an evening at the beginning of the month of November to talk about what it means to be thankful. Then we write some of the things we are grateful for on leaves cut from cardstock and hang them from a "tree" made of branches collected in our backyard. (These pics are from last year, however, since our house is in the staged-to-sell mode.)

Just thought I'd share with you a couple of the things my little ones are thankful for...


Oh, yes, Mr. Two and Mr. Three are very grateful for Spongebob (and, to be honest, during the "witching" hour around dinner time, I am very grateful for Spongebob as well!)

Mr. One is grateful for hot cocoa on snowy days. And yes, I must admit, that is one thing I am very grateful for as well. Well, as long as I'm being honest, I'm grateful for hot chocolate pretty much any day. ;-)




And because I promised a project teaser...here's a photo of the "lovely" closet in our library. Any guesses what this is going to become? Hint: my pretty new pinboards will find a home here. I'll show you all next week.



Don't forget, tomorrow is the Frugal Friday Linky Party here at the Shabby Nest. For all of you night owls, MckLinky will go up tonight at 12:01 am EST. Can't wait to see what you all have up your sleeves this time!



Have a great Thursday~

Why I love to Blog~

With a title like that, this post could be book-length. But today I just want to share one of the reasons I love blogging so much. And that is....inspiring my readers to beautify their homes!

Last week I got an email from one of my readers...Tiffany at Happy Day. She thanked me for my blog and for inspiring her to personalize her home. She shared me with me a post that she was working on, because it was inspired by my mini-mudroom.

This is my mini-mudroom. If you haven't had a chance to read about it, here's the link.

Tiffany had this "architectural feature" in her home that she just couldn't decide what to do with.

Until one day, when she hit upon the idea of using the idea she saw here to create her own mini-mudroom.

How fabulous is this???

I was so excited when I saw what she had done, I emailed her right back to ask if I could share it with my readers. There is nothing more gratifying than knowing that someone has been inspired to create something wonderful by one of my posts. Thanks for sharing this with me Tiffany!

If you'd like to see Tiffany's entire post, here's the link!

Have a great Wednesday~

Kitchen Shelf Inspiration~

Oh, I just love blogland! I get so much decorating inspiration from all of you lovely bloggers out there! And especially since so many of my favorite shelter magazines are falling by the way, I look to blogs for inspiration more and more!

I have two shelves in my kitchen that the Hubby built for me to replace a horrible "floating" cabinet which looked terribly out of place. They are great, and I love them. But, I have had a hard time deciding exactly what I wanted to do with them. Until yesterday, when I found this great post by Heather Bullard about her newly renovated kitchen.


You can see in this BEFORE pic how great the shelves are, but the "stuff" I had on them was uninspired to say the least. Can you all say "BORING!" Now, this AFTER pic is much better. I still need a pretty platter for the bottom shelf (all the platters I have aside from the square one on the top shelf are too big...or too colorful). I'd also like a few smaller pieces like Heather has on her shelves. But overall, a WONDERFUL transformation! All Hail Design Blogs!!!


Have a lovely Wednesday~

Laundry/Half Bath Reveal...Finally!

Today is the long-awaited, much anticipated (by me at least) reveal of our laundry room/half bath! I believe in giving credit where credit is due, so I want to start out by saying that this whole design was really a collaborative effort between me and the Hubby. He has a great eye for design, and we really planned this thing together right from the start. Besides that, he did all the hard stuff in here (anything construction related) I painted and did the decorating. So, ya know, he deserves a little pat on the back.


And now for those of you who care at all why it has taken so long for us to finish, I have a little story about the reason (I promise to be brief). Some very good friends of ours had a "minor" catastrophe with their house. What started out as simply having a french door to their deck replaced ended up being a major remodel of one side of their house. The contractor who was putting in the door discovered a problem with their subfloor which was rotting. (Hey the house is over 200 years old, so what do you expect?) The rotting floor discovery led to a cracked beam discovery which led to a structural engineer telling them that they had to brace up the second floor...yada yada yada. So since the Hubby is a home improvement contractor, he helped them put the whole thing back together. And since this project was in addition to his other job commitments, he spent his spare time there working on their house instead of at our house. And you know what? That's okay with me. We love our friends. Their house is now fine. And our laundry room/bathroom is now finished. Sooooo after that super long explanation....here's the laundry/bath...



We went for a cottage-y farmhouse feel...
I really wish I had some before pictures, but the Hubby had torn out everything before we even moved in. I'm not exaggerating. There was no floor, no vanity, not even a toilet. He had to put a toilet in the first day we lived in the house. True story.

I love this mirror. Picked it up forever ago. It's followed us from house to house, but it looks perfect here. (I'll have to take it with us if we ever move though!)

One of my favorite things about this bathroom...the little vanity and the faucet! We had to have storage, but didn't want to take up too much room so we found this little darlin' at Home Depot. I love the fact that it looks cottagy like an old farm sink. And I *heart* that faucet!


Here is one of the locker baskets I had tucked away, it was too wide for the shelves I'll show you in a minute, but it looks great on the floor with extra towels tucked inside!

Uh, so yeah, what do I say about this...it's the toilet. Ahem. But what I really wanted to show is the beadboard wainscotting....it's 4 feet high with a great ledge on it. The wall behind the washer and dryer has beadboard all the way up to the ceiling...a focal wall if you will! And on the window...a little mistreatment. Just used remnant fabric from my mudbench and upholstery tacks.

This is the shelf on the other wall above the washer and dryer. I adore how it turned out! My cute feather lamp found a home there. And I love the idea of the old farm wire basket holding extra TP. Hey, at least my guests will know where it is if they should run out ;-) The sign reminds me that I should make things easy on myself (even though I do at least 10-12 loads of laundry of week.)

A great idea for holding those pesky drier sheets. (And q-tips - never know when you might need 'em.)

The shelf with the washer/dryer...see the little green light on the washer...yeah, it's running...pretty much always! :)

A little side note for those of you with design-oriented minds. We decided to go ahead and mix metals here...all of the fixtures are a brushed nickel, and the accents are an oil rubbed bronze (or a painted black...it all looks the same to me) but we figured, if we're aiming to look cottage, then we can mix and match finishes because it gives it an acquired-over-time feel. Besides I like the way it all looks together - which is what really matters.



Oh, and these pumpkins? Not in the bathroom...in the kitchen....just here to remind me to say Happy Halloween!

Have a lovely weekend~

Laundry Room Inspiration

I picked up this month's issue of Country Home Magazine and loved, loved, loved their idea kitchen. In particular, I loved this laundry area!

Photo from Country Home

We are still in the process of putting the finishing touches on our half bath/laundry room and this laundry gave me some ideas for how to incorporate some of the things I want to include.

Don't you love the countertop over the washer/dryer? It adds such great usable space and makes the space look more intentional! And I love the old metal locker baskets for storage. I have some of those tucked away, I'm going to have to pull them out. I also love the way they incorporated a gift wrap/craft area by putting rolls of gift wrap and ribbon on paper towel holders, and the little kraft paper contraption is great!

The compartment they put between the washer and dryer is a super idea. It's used to hold detergent and such. Too bad I have to have a huge washer and dryer to hold six people's worth of laundry or I would definitely use that idea.

All in all, what a pretty area to do the laundry...it would almost make it bearable! The color palette is so soothing, and the idea of concealing the washer and dryer with curtains is downright brilliant (and quite Nester-like, don't ya think?) Leave it to the folks at Country Home!

The Kitchen...AFTER

Okay, so as I mentioned in my last post...the kitchen is still a work in progress, but it is a whole lot better than it was originally. (I have to apologize for how yellow some of these photos are...we've had a patch of rain here and it was hard to get good natural light, so the yellow ones were taken with indoor lighting (aak!) but I know you all have good imaginations so you get the idea.) We decided to go for a sort of French Country feel, so we chose a warm cream color for the cabinetry. I was originally planning on glazing the cabinets to bring out the details of the paneling, but once we got them painted, I was really happy with how they looked and opted not to glaze them.


It's difficult to tell in these pictures, but the color on the wall is Ralph Lauren's Cathedral Gray which as I mentioned in a previous entry is really more of a gray/green. It is very soothing, and sets off both the cream cabinetry and the black beadboard beautifully.

If you look closely at the baseboards in any of these photos, you can see that I haven't painted them yet. Yep, that's what I mean by a work in progress. They will eventually be the color of the cabinets. eventually. (And yeah, I know I need to get rid of the stereo in the corner...oh, and the white microwave...sigh.)

And here is a tricky trick for you all. Our appliances did not all match. We bought the oven and the refrigerator while we lived at our previous rental house so we brought them with us when we moved here. They "blend" with each other. The refrigerator is obviously black but it has a little bit of stainless accent on it, so it went well with the oven. But the dishwasher that was here when we moved in was white. I had decided that I would purchase some of that faux stainless sheeting. I had even found a place online where I was going to buy it (it's not very expensive by the way). But I was telling my sister-in-law what I was thinking of doing, and she told me to unscrew the casings of the existing front and remove it, and that oftentimes the appliance underneath is already metal. She was right! I took off the front and the dishwasher was actually a stainless color metal...but it looked horrible (it's an old dishwasher...probably won't last too much longer.) So I couldn't do that. There is an upside to this story, however. The other side of the white front was black. Yep...black! I flipped it over, put it back on, and now my dishwasher matches the refrigerator and stove. FREE!!! Pretty sneaky huh?

I love the fact that I cleaned off the refrigerator. It look so much cleaner in my kitchen without all of the photos and stuff on the fridge. But since I am a photo junkie, I had to put them somewhere. I have a cute magnetic white board (framed in black) that I put on the doorway to the basement across from the oven. All the stuff is still there, but it looks purposeful and not cluttered.


Here you can see the beadboard on the bar. It looks fabulous and makes the kitchen look so custom. We also put beadboard on the refrigerator surround...and the mudbench is just down the hall. It has beadboard too, so it all coordinates.

Here are those cute shelves the Hubby made to replace that dumb old floating cabinet. Eventually, we would like to replace the countertops with something dark (solid surface preferably), and if I had my way, I'd replace the split corner sink...what were they thinking when they put THAT in?!? But, we are on a pretty tight budget, so neither of those things are an option yet.

This sweet chalkboard (yep, another chalkboard!) was a Christmas gift from my brother-in-law and family. It has my current favorite quote written on it.

Gotta love this little rooster...what respectable French Country kitchen wouldn't have one of these?
So, even though it's not quite done...it's getting there and it's worlds better than it was so I'm a pretty happy girl!

A Wicked Awesome Mud Room

We live in the Northeast. As anyone who lives in this part of the country knows, mud rooms are essential. When we bought our house last year it didn't have a mud room. It still doesn't have a mudroom, but when we first saw the house we had a brainstorm. We could make a built-in mud "area". There was a random closet just inside the back door and another closet that seemed to be out of place in the room behind so we thought that we could just open them both up and make a six foot long mud bench. We found out the hard way that wouldn't be possible due to an airvent that ran up between them. So we just converted the closet by the back door into a mudbench. The other closet will become a built-in computer desk. But that is a story for another day.

I tell you the mud bench was one of the best things we've done since we moved in. And it's sooo cute too! The hubby built it by lining the interior with bead board - one of my favorite things. He left a cubby at the bottom for a basket that holds our shoes. I am still looking for the perfect basket, so for now we are using a laundry basket. Aargh! But I made a fun little sign with a chalkboard that I purchased at Michael's Craft. I drilled a couple of holes in the top...added some great check ribbon...and voila! the ugly laundry basket is not so bad anymore!

The cushion was made with an old crib mattress. I took the plastic cover off and sawed the thing in half using a trick that I saw on HGTV...I used an electric carving knife! Why not? Heaven knows it nevers gets used on a turkey or anything like that. Then I sewed a fun little cover using check fabric and $3.99 linen from Joann's. I added the ruffle along the top seam to give it a more custom look. The cute bumblebee pillows are an old IKEA find but they looked perfect!! (I just love bees...they're so french...and so Martha!) The basket was a lucky find at Christmas Tree Shops! (For those of you who aren't on the East Coast I truly mourn that you don't have Christmas Tree Shops...they are wonderful...and affordable!)

Then because only one of my children can read, I added tags with their photos so they would know which hook was theirs. This was a fun and easy project...I just printed the photos out...didn't even bother to use photo paper...pasted them on some card stock..."laminated" them using clear contact paper and tied more check ribbon through the top. Then I thumbtacked them to the crown moulding. Yes, I did say thumbtacks! But at least they're clear and not multi-colored.

All in all, not a bad little project. As they say in these parts...it's wicked awesome!~