Tossed and Turned Tuesday- Reese’s Princess Bed

This is  how you know Reese is just like a human child.  She saw her bed, got all excited, sat on it for a while…now..she’s over it!
Yes, world, my darling precious girl is a B-R-A-T.

She does look so precious in her new bed though doesn’t she!! Yes I know she needs a haircut…no time…don’t judge!
Here’s what it looked like before:

And After:






I think she looks precious, but what can I say?!?! Also I forgot to mention that the blanket she is on was given to her by a lady at a flea market that was selling it. I was walking Reese and the lady thought she was so cute she had to give the blanket to her (don’t ask me why, I have no idea). Anyway Reese has been sleeping on it ever since. It’s kind of her blankee!
NEXT WEEK
So this is the last couple weeks of school and I have a Senior that is demanding my time so I won’t be posting any before and afters next week…however…I may have a contest up my sleeve so be looking for it. I say “may have” because I have no idea when I’m going to do it, but I’ll let you know as soon as I know.
Oh and I’ll have prom pics to share and graduation is coming up and Graduation party – oh my!
(I found another gray hair, I wonder why?)
RITA

Thrown Away Thursday- Princess Pea!

I’ll explain the title in a minute!

First let me show you the bed frame I just picked up…fit for a princess, right?

… a princess pup, that is!

I about died when I saw this at a yard sale for $5. It’s a doll bed but OF COURSE I immediately thought of Reese!! She is the princess after all!

Look at that precious girl!!

       

Yes, this is my Princess Pea! And the reason I call her that is because of the story of the princess and the pea. I know for a fact that if this girl were to sleep on 100 mattresses, she could feel a pea underneath because she is a REAL princess and she knows it! '

Do I get teased for saying this? Yes
Do I get blamed for loving Reese more than anyone else? Yes
Do I talk for her and give her a speech impediment? Yes

I know…I know…ridiculous but she’s is my precious girl and if she wants an old Victorian bed, by golly, that’s what she’s gonna get!

See you Tuesday!

Rita (mom of a princess pea!)

Tossed And Turned Tuesday- Close Encounters of the Minty Kind

I don’t think I mentioned that this dresser cost me a total of $5.00!! Yeah, I guess they figured it was the right price for a sticker book, and technically that’s what it became (haha) but for me, the price was PERFECT!!

Before~

After~

I have to tell you about the color choice. Whenever I get online I always turn to a few of my favorite blogs. One of them being Cassie’s blog from Primitive and Proper(of course!). She’s like my furniture mentor. I go to her blog for advice ALL the time. Anyway the other day she posted a mint green dresser she just finished and mentioned that it was the latest color. I teased and said…”well, if YOU say so .." then it has to be true!!

Put it this way, if CASSIE SAYS that violet is the new black, you better believe that you’ll be seeing violet all over blogland not to mention that can you just bought from Home Depot!!

Anyway,my mom called the other day and said she just bought me some oops paint. Well I got it today and guess what color it was?? That’s right, Mint. Well at least that’s what it looks like to me anyway.

This is the lovely top before. I totally forgot to add this to my last post but it is VERY worthy of being seen. I sanded the heck out of it!

At first I thought it was a water stain but now I firmly believe that the aliens sat their laser gun on top of it and burned a mark onto it. It was really awful!

I couldn’t exactly leave this post on a bad note so here it is again:

This little precious will find it’s way to my sister’s house. I’m glad it’s staying in the family! She wants it to look aged so I’ll add some light distressing to it.

I hope you all had a great Mother’s Day! I did and got a new Drill set!!! It’s freaking amazing. We laughed because I’ve been wanting my own drill that’s lightweight instead of using Sammy’s heavy one and I got it! I told Sammy he’ll get a spa set for Father’s Day. If you know him, you know he’d enjoy it – haha!

Have a good week,

Rita

 

 

Thrown Away Thursday–Alien Invasion

 

Typically this would turn me off if I saw this at a garage sale but not when it’s stuck on something that looks like this:

Yep underneath all those stickers and extra sets of doorknobs lies this beauty.

I’ll try to restore it to looking beautiful again, so come back on Thursday, ok?

Rita

What a week!

You know the phrase "gone fishing"?? Well that's where I feel like I've been but not at a lake. My house has been under construction with plumbing issues galore and I'm over it!

We had my in-laws over the past couple of weekends to help and in the midst, Ashley had Prom and it was Sammy's birthday week.

I'm EXHAUSTED!

So to fully understand the chaos you have to picture my house. Right side of when you open the door, CONSTRUCTION ZONE! Dust, dirt, mud, water, dishwasher in the middle of the kitchen, dirty dishes that couldn't be cleaned in the sink and crap everywhere.

On the left hand side, Ashley and her best friend Dalila in beautiful gowns getting primped and ready for Prom. What a sight!

Meanwhile I did their hair so they could save $100 each. In order to do this I watched You Tube videos to learn how do to a  "up-do" and a "side sweep". Yeah, I was super mom!

Since this is a short refresher post, I’ll attach some quick photos of this past week.

Ashley and Dalila ready to go to their Masquerade ball:

Susie came by and took some photos which I’ll share when they’re ready. This one was a quick shot before they left.

Speaking of MY BFF Susie, here is the card she made for Sammy’s Birthday from me and the kids. The photos are all of his stuff he treasures!

This was the proof of the front and back of the card. It’s on a leather background.

 

This was on the inside:

 

And lastly here is a before and after photo of the little desk I made for my niece Mia:

 

After…

 

I have great stuff to work on now that I have some time to do it! So stick around!

Rita

Tossed and Turned Tuesday- Kitchen’s Done!!

 

This was the easiest project I have ever done…NOT!!!
I honestly don't know what I was thinking. I mean, I get that I wanted some color in my life but I really should have stuck to furniture. It took me 2 weeks to finish this project. Including two weeks of eating around drying doors, cooking around open cabinets, and not to mention looking at an unsightly dining/kitchen every day!
The thing that set me back was the color. At first I wanted a light blue color and when I went to Home Depot, the color I chose looked white in my lighting. I have a photo but it’s on the phone and looks really bad.
So then I chose a darker (light blue) and it came out looking like a bright pastel blue. In order to make lemonade out of lemons, I used this on the little blue humidor I painted  this month which Sammy swears is the same color but I beg to differ.

Since I decided to paint one whole section of cabinets and let it dry before I realized it was (again) not the right color,  I had more to scrape off. This took the longest time!! I even used paint stripper but it had lots of nooks and crannies so it was very time consuming.
In the long run I worked on this two complete weekends and after work in between.  It was the longest project I ever did. But worth it I must say considering I went from this:

To this:



OH! I forgot to mention that I tried to be smart and paint them for the third time with the doors attached…DON'T EVER DO THAT!!  I had drips galore!
Now that this project is done (even though still not quite the blue I was going for) and my husband "likes it enough", I can finally say this was a project I did myself for days on end and I even drilled those holes for knobs and pulls.
I do love my blue kitchen!!
And of course Kunu got in on the action!

One more thing I forgot to show was besides touch ups here and there I have one teeny weenie problem…

D’oh!! Yeah my planning skills suck. I'm going to have to take this handle off and fill the holes then repaint.  Ahh the joy doesn't end.
(please don’t judge my drawer, I dumped everything in then got sidetracked with the handle:)
RITA

Check out my link up parties on my LINK UP PAGE above!

Thrown Away Thursday– Cabinet Fever!

Well I couldn’t just paint my fireplace and look at these ugly cabinets right next to them, now could I?

Also just want to point out that my kitchen island doesn’t usually look that bad but I cleaned off my counter tops and it turned into my staging area.

I’ll be back next week to show you my currently “under construction” kitchen!

Have a great weekend!

Rita

Tossed and Turned Tuesday- My Fireplace

When you live with someone who loves contemporary and you love vintage, then you get married and you have to decorate to fit the both of you, what do you do?

Well, here’s what I did!

I know some of you are thinking “what’s the big whoop?”. Well before it was brown and I hated it. It used to be stark white before that and I hated it even more. I’m usually not this disgruntled I promise but this fireplace is a lose lose situation.

After browsing the web and consulting with a few blog friends it became apparent that this fireplace needed to be redone. I don’t think accessories would have done it alone so after seeing pretty pictures of Cassie of Primitive and Proper’s gray fireplace, I started thinking about gray on my fireplace. The more I pictured it the more I liked it.

I ended up painting it “Elephant Gray” and glazed the wood mantle with a black/ brown concoction I came up with.  Also, if you notice I now have two doors (haha). The one to the left was hidden by a screen and a chair. Upon the recommendation of a friend, I put in two wicker blinds from Ikea. They are hard to see in this photo because of the crazy sun glare that seeps through my windows but trust me they look great!!

As far as the pictures, well I had originally thought of putting a mirror up there but Sammy didn’t like the idea. Then I thought of a nice big picture but the more we looked we never agreed. Sammy actually reminded me of these pictures. They even have have a little history too.

These are the first pictures I ever printed in the graphics department. I even cut them myself.  When Sammy and I split up I decided I needed to paint the kitchen of our town home. I painted it this cool green color and decorated the edge of the top border of the wall with these cool pictures I made. There were more then and my kitchen was only a few feet wide so it looked really great.  When we moved I hung them in our new house on a blank wall where the china cabinet is now and eventually they came down again.

I didn’t think they’d end up back on the wall and I’m glad they did!

 

I still have a few ideas for sprucing it up for now, this’ll do.

Hope you enjoyed it as much as we are!

Rita

Thrown Away Thursday–My Fireplace Facelift

Technically this isn’t a “thrown away” item (you probably figured that out already) but if I could’ve removed it and thrown it away, I really would have.

Here’s my blah brown fireplace.

It’s remained naked after Christmas when I took down the festive mantle and decided I was hating the brown. I’ve had all these ideas swirling around in my head but told myself that until I was certain what I wanted, it would remain in the buff.

Albeit’ I didn’t realize it would be four months later that imagination would suddenly strike, but it finally did and I don’t have to look at this anymore!

I also was a good wife and consulted my husband on my thought process and we settled for a happy medium. Actually, that’s a lie, I gave him some options that I liked and took the one idea he had and ran with it.

I hope you come back Tuesday to see what it looks like now.

Rita

Meet Andie!

I caved and bought Brianna a rat for her birthday. Meet Andie, her pet Rat. No not a hamster or gerbil, a rat with a tail. I have to admit he’s pretty freakin’ adorable and sweet though.

Yes, he’s the latest addition to our family and he’s getting along nicely!

So for those of you thinking, “is she crazy?? I wouldn’t let that thing in my house”…well typically I’d concur and would never see myself getting one, much less holding it, but I did.

Sorry for the blurry pictures but this little guy is fast!

The thing that really put me over the edge is, if most of you don’t know, Brianna (just turned 15 year old) suffers from depression. We’ve had a rough couple of years and though most days can be a struggle, the thing that hurts me most is she hates her smile.  I, needless to say, love that smile of hers and for her birthday(and quite frankly the last couple of years or so) all she’s wanted was a rat.

So this year for her birthday, I drove her to pet smart and told her to pick one out.  She got her rat and I got her smile that I miss seeing so much. I’d say we both won with him!

On a side note, we have a cat and two dogs whom I honestly expected would react different to this little guy.

Kunu,the cat, likes to walk into Brianna’s room every now and again and will sit and stare at the rat. Most times he doesn’t even care that Andie’s in the house.

Reese, on the other hand wants him dead. She tries to bite at his tail every time it sticks out of the cage and when we take him out, she jumps and nips in the air. I told Sammy that it’s kind of like seeing those vampire movies when the vampire gets around blood and is uncontrollable. She gets a little crazy like that! I can see her plotting something with the way she looks at him.

Tubby… well you’ll have to see for yourself. I think it’s safe to say, he found another friend.

Tubby first meeting

You have to know that Tubby is a licker to fully appreciate this video. haha!

Rita