Initial Thoughts

I've found the most difficult thing in decorating my house has been finding wall art that I like.  A lot of my walls are bare because of this very reason.  I just really can't find alot of things that I like, and most of the stuff I do like is about the distance from here to Mars out of my budget.  So I've challenged myself to DIY some wall art that will not only be very easy on the wallet, but also satisfy my empty walls.  In scouring Pinterest, I've found art with letters and initials.  I love the idea of wall art that means something, so I decided to make some art for the family room with our initials.

 I started out with this frame- it was a steal at Big Lots for only 5 bucks!!

I wanted something besides the white mat, so I headed out to Michael's and grabbed this sheet of scrapbook paper (matches the red wall in the fam room).

The next step was to cut the paper to the size of the mat.  Actually this was the hardest part because I chose striped paper, I had to make sure the stripes all lined up.  It would have been much easier with non-striped paper.  :)   After cutting the paper, I used a glue stick to glue it to the mat that came with the frame.  Then I made a little magic on the computer and printed off our initials!

Put it all together and this is what I got!  I like it!!

Now it came time to decided where it would go.  We have this strange corner wall that ended up being just the right size.

So I took out my handy-dandy Command strips... love these things... seriously.  Chris isn't too fond of the idea of me taking a drill or hammer our walls... I'm a little clumsy at times... so this gives me a way to hang my own frames.  Plus, no damage to my walls when I change my mind!



I made sure it was level and stuck up... I am very pleased with the results :)

So how much did it cost me?  Here's the breakdown.

Frame- $5.00

Scrapbook paper- $1.00

Command strips- $2.50

Total- $8.50!!

Not too bad!

Brooke  Y

Camping In...

It's the last of the house tour and I just have one more room I want to show you for now, the family room.  This is the room where all the fun stuff happens.  It's where us Gillespies get crazy!  (If you call brownies and movie night crazy... and we certainly do!)  This is the room where we spend 90% of our time in the evenings.  And why not??  It has all the fun stuff!  We were having fun with this room even before we moved in... I'll explain later :)  So here are some before shots.

hmmm... not sure what was on my camera lens...

There are those beautiful curtains again.... ugh

We had never had a fireplace before, so we were downright giddy about this one :)

We had the house ready to move into in the winter of 2009.  But, we were missing one thing... electricity!  The electric company took forever and a day to get our electric hooked up... and if you know Chris and I, you know we aren't the most patient of people.  So, we broke out the sleeping bags and the s'mores and camped out in our house.  Okay... there were no s'mores, looking back, there should have been.  It just so happened to be in the middle of a cold snap and blankets didn't help!

We had work lights, a kerosene heater and 2 subs from M.T.O. and we were good to go!



 Don't I look like I'm having fun?  Actually, it was a blast... that face is just frozen like that!

Yes, we had our pool table before we had electricity... don't judge us...

We finally got electricty and heat!  Then we started painting.

The whole time I was painting that red wall I was thinking, "My dad would never have let me do this at home!"  Insert sneaky laugh here.

And finally... here is the family room now.

This wall contains Chris' pride and joy.... and the bane of my existence.  Actually the deer don't bother me too much, but 2 is the limit.

We still have a lot of work to do in here.  The drywallers came and patched some cracks that we had, and when we touched up the paint, it didn't blend well.  So, we will be re-painting the Khaki at some point.  Luckily the red wall didn't need any repairs, so it is still okay.  I want some type of console table to go under the deer to fill in the void and eventually I would like to do some built-ins on either side of the fireplace.  For now, this room has turned into a cozy retreat.  Now to get more wall art for in there... there's alot of wall space that needs filled!

Brooke  Y

You Are What You Eat!

It's garden season!!  YAY YAY YAY!!!  Most of my traits I take from my mom (looks, temper, the occasional blonde moment....)  Seriously, I once had a man stop me in a gas station and call me by my mom's name.  Then he stopped and said, "Wait, there's no way Diana would still be that young!"  Turns out she had gone to high school with him and apparently I look like she did in high school.



But one thing that I definitely got from my daddy is the love of a garden. 

To me, my garden is one of the most peaceful things.   I love going out there and seeing how much things have grown while I was at work.  This time of year, it seems like it changes everyday.  I always wanted a big garden, but never had the area to do it.  Last year we could have planted here, but with all of the construction and yard work, we didn't have time.  So this year is my first year having my very own garden. 

When Spring rolled around, Daddy brought his tiller to my house and Chris and I plotted out where we wanted the garden.  We planted tomatoes, corn, cucumbers, peppers, yellow squash, cabbage and lettuce.  The rabbits ate my lettuce :(  The rest of the garden is doing great.  I thought I would share some pictures of it!

So far we've picked some cucumbers and yellow squash.  I can't wait to taste all of the veggies we get!  One more thing...

Don't forget!  It's berry season too!  I'll be making jam in a few days :)

Brooke  Y

House Tour- The Kitchen

I have a love/hate relationship with my kitchen.  When I'm in the mood to make sweets and try new recipes, it's by far my favorite room of the house.  But.... when I get home from work and have to go through the whole "what do you want for dinner?" "I don't care, what do you want?" thing, I want to be anywhere but there.  I think cooking is always better when the mood strikes, not just cooking because it's dinner time.  When it came time to decorate the kitchen, I wanted something neutral with pops of color.  Here is the kitchen before.

Chris- there's no food in there yet!  :)

 Don't you just LOVE the curtains.... (insert gag noise here)

The appliances aren't even unwrapped yet in these pics.

At least everything was brand new.  We painted the walls Olympic Khaki in satin finish.  We have since decided that everthing we paint will be in eggshell finish.  It seems to cover imperfections better.  I added pops of color with accessories and made the striped window valances to tie together all of the colors.

We had the island/ bar, but I didnt know what to do about chairs.  Luckily, when I picked out my kitchen table, it came with 8 chairs.  8 chairs around the table felt a bit tight, so we moved 2 of them over to the bar.  It was a perfect fit because the table is counter height.  I love it when things just fall into place like that. :)  I have one more room that I want to show in my next post- our family room, then I have some DIY stuff and room makeovers that I want to share.  The family room is where we spend the most of our time, so it has all of our fun stuff!  Thanks for stopping by!

Brooke  Y