Design Time

Over at Mary's she started some thing fun and I'm glad to join in!

Being that the Hubs' job is all about design, I often have to opt out to his more experienced opinion. That being said, there's something to say for compromise!

Our whole first floor is painted in a great color by Benjamin Moo.re. Of course, at the moment I can't think of what it is...but it is such an interesting color because it almost changes with the lighting. On bright mornings, the color goes almost beige, and in the darker corners, it looks like a soft shade of green. Odd. But fun.

Here in our living room we had a big wall over the couch that needed "something." One picture would be overwhelming so we took an idea we saw in a magazine, probably Potte.ry Barn, and bought simple black wood frames with matting. To create a bit of conversation we "borrowed" some great landscape shots that my sister-in-law took on a vacation to the Smoky Mountains. Cost.co does a great job with large size photos and...viola'....art. By God.

Since our first floor was mostly one color, we wanted something different in the main floor bathroom. We loved this dark color (again by B. Moore), and decided to do a fun stripe as well. The stripe was achieved after painting the whole room. We just went back and...eekk...painted polyurethane for stripes. It was a fast way to get the look we want. Only drawback...it's there forever. But we love it and we've gotten many compliments on it. It also adds some drama to an otherwise ho-hum room. I recently posted for ideas for the wall space, and oddly enough, I found these pictures in a closet that just hadn't found a home yet. Yeah, for cheap tricks!



I really love to give rooms personality through color. One of my favorite colors went into the one room the Hubs allowed me to pick the paint for...all by myself. The laundry room. How fitting, eh? I didn't care because the color in this room brightens any mood, no matter how dingy or stained. I think I freaked out a good friend at church one day when I ran up to him, pointing at his shirt, and said, "THAT is the color I want to paint my laundry room!" I think he was ok with it, because he literally was willing to give me the shirt off his back. So, a grand search went out for the "perfect pumpkin" shade. Found it. Love it. (Oh, by the way, the spots on the door are a paint splatter from the first month we were in our house. Our dog at the time somehow managed to pull a paint can off the counter and it splattered the whole room, washer, dryer and all. Since she's passed away, we just haven't the heart to paint over it.)


Keeping the idea that all rooms get their personalities from color, Ellie's room got some sweet, girly colors with a whimsical touch. The "wave" was a bit of a challenge, but I created a stencil and used colored pencil to trace the lines I needed to follow. The colored pencil was the same color as the wall color so I didn't need to worry if I didn't fully cover a line. It took a while, but I was 9 months pregnant and Josh slept 2-3 hours at a time for his afternoon naps. What's a girl to do with herself? I painted the flowers, butterflies and bugs with stencils and stamps and filled in the stems and bug trails by hand. It's one of my favorite things we've done.


Josh's room got some great boy colors in terrific shades of blue picked out and painted by the Hubs. He did the chair rail as well. The cute wall stickers were found at Bomba,yKids, and I splurged on the matching quilt for his bed. I wanted something that would last the test of time and so we went a bit retro on the design and later found the cool black and white baseball pictures at Tar.get.


Owen's room shows how things change with your third child. His room was painted to be simple and versatile. I think Mary and I saw the same picture for this idea. The white stripes are actually made by putting down the thin blue painter's tape in two parallel lines on the white walls. We then just painted around them. Take the tape off...and viola'...white lines. The green was a bit brighter than what I anticipated, it actually glows a bit on a sunny afternoon. But it doesn't seem to be keeping him awake at night. *Hehe.* We took similar colors to the quilt on his crib, a hand-me-down from Josh.

No photos or cute items up on the wall yet. I did make some canvas pictures with car/boat/train stamps but I haven't figured out how/where I'd like to hang them. I also have his name in letters I'd like to put up. I LOVE words on the wall, hence Ellie's name, and in Josh's room, he has the words "play ball." Originally, I wanted to free hand some words like "zoom, fly, race, etc." but the dear Hubs was hesitant about my skills and I couldn't really disagree. So if any of you have a steady hand and know a fun font...come on over!


As you've seen, even the bathrooms need personality. For the kids' bathroom I went with a fun frog theme. I found some cute stamps and added these little fellas to the room. I love how they look like they are jumping right into the shower with them! We hope to find some "famous frogs throughout history" (kermit the frog, frog and toad) photos and frame those by the sink. Hey, if you can't have fun in a kids bathroom...

So, I'm pretty sure I've given you a tour of most of our house! Of course, the one room that has no personality yet is....you guessed it...our bedroom. We hope to paint it this summer and create one more room with personality by color... you'll have to just wait and see...

Thanks for visiting!